Josie's Post: Examining our Relationship with Food

During fifth week Isabelle ended our class with a beautiful thought: that at the end of all “this” we need to love and respect ourselves if we hope to help those around us.  I have tried to carry that thought with me for the past few weeks and have found that I still have a certain guilt when I make decisions about food and what I put into my body. Do I respect myself when I eat “unhealthy” foods? Am I treating my body “correctly”? Eating healthy is not an accessible option for everyone, but how do we even approach that problem when the word healthy has been warped into diet trends and “clean eating”.

It seems that for as long as I can remember there have been diet trends released on Good Morning America and on People magazine covers telling consumers how they should eat in order to be healthy. I can remember my parents trying the atkins diet years ago and I know that this comes from their internalized fear of seeing their parents suffer from diabetes and dangerously high cholesterol. For some, this relationship to food is shaped by the scientific and cultural definition of “healthy food”. For others, they have been forced to find a new way to eat because of serious food allergies and digestive intolerances. We have also discussed in this class that certain groups do not even have the opportunity to choose healthy foods and follow these trends. This week I want us to explore the messages we have received past and present about what it means to eat “right”.

Social media has used these trends to their advantage. Check out these diagrams published by buzzfeed last year. https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolynkylstra/healthy-eating-charts?utm_term=.baebA56XD#.ugyMOXRoy

Do you all think that these diagrams and “tips” are positive or negative, and why? What audiences are they reaching?

What kind of message does this send for immigrants and their families in the US? I know that an Argentinian’s diet does not fit in any of those charts. Certain portions for foods like rice and legumes are unrealistic for people from countries like Costa Rica where these are a major food group. Emma had us dig into cuisine and our experiences on study abroad during fifth week and I feel that revisiting some of those topics could be beneficial for our class discussion.

Class discussions in other academic settings as well as seeing these trends play out in my hometown have made it obvious that middle/upper class society members are the people able to indulge in these trends. Check out this huffingtonpost link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taste/

I only ask of you to read the titles and captions, what stands out?

Much of the conversations surrounding food  are attached to scientific findings, and the knowledge of nutritionists. I do not intend for this blog post to be a nutrition lesson. Personally, I feel that I am still figuring out what is best for me and what makes me feel “healthy” . My first year here at K, I took full advantage of the cafeteria and ate dessert after almost every meal (my parents were sugarphobics and according to them, aside from family gatherings, birthdays, and holidays, dessert was the enemy). I came home to my honest (but loving) female family members telling me that I did not escape the freshman 15. Insecurities aside, I knew that I probably was not putting the best ingredients into my body but getting up for seconds and thirds in the cafeteria helped me deal with stress.

The summer after my first year at K my father and I attempted to live with the Paleo diet for a few weeks. While I lived almost for the first time in my life with no farts (TMI..) I woke up craving sugar and had to stop going out with friends because I ended up eating iceberg lettuce salads while they enjoyed burgers and nachos. I would follow the strict guidelines for about a week and then purge on sweets and cheddar cheese. These moments of “cheating” made me feel guilty and confused. Was I the healthy one during those weeks? Or were my friends making the “right” choice?

Please read the article below. I do not agree with all of the author’s points but it does shed some insight on diet culture in general.
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/ruby-tandoh-eat-clean-wellness?utm_source=vicetwitteruk

I realize it is lengthy, but if you have time please read some of the comments in response to the article.

How do people with food allergies react to this author’s points about gluten’s comparison to MSG? Feel free to respond in your comments about initial thoughts and responses to Tandoh's claims. As someone who has pretty uncomfortable reactions to dairy, I find her critique a bit intense. I have friends and colleagues who have made conscious decisions about their diet, whether it be going paleo or gluten-free, and it has changed their lives for the better.  

Reflecting on what is written this whole post seems like a giant contradiction. And it is! I hope to unpack this contradiction in class and to look into personal insights for the “right” way to eat (Or if there even is one…?). This entry is a bit anecdotal and personal but I believe food is personal. This topic can be difficult and I hope to make our class on Thursday an open space. Feel free to respond in however you feel comfortable to this blog. It can be open and free flowing. You can think about:

What messages have you all been given about what is the “right” food to eat? Was that put into question when you came into college?

Have there been times in your life where you have been forced to reevaluate your relationship to food? Has this class made you reevaluate your relationship to food? 

If you all could create a new food trend in hopes of creating a less confusing rhetoric, what would it be? What messages would you hope to send?

Week 7 on the Farm: Bees

Weather Forecast: Tuesday, high of 63 degrees F, 60% chance of rain. Wednesday, high of 75 degrees F, partly cloudy.

John and I have had a busy weekend racing ahead of Tuesday's forecasted rain! It's 10pm now and as soon as I finish up this blog post I get to have dinner. :) But we accomplished a lot: two rows of the strawberries are entirely weeded; the first batch of head lettuces are in the ground, as are beets, chard, and cabbages; the salad mix bed is prepped for planting later this week; codling moth traps are set in the orchard; the petal fall nutritional sprays are on the peaches; the garden across the driveway is cleared and one bed is composted and ready to plant; and I got a new compost pile started.

Also, I became acquainted with a new insect this weekend: the green pug moth, whose larva is chewing the middles out of my apple blossoms: http://bugguide.net/node/view/355667. Little bugger.

Of course there are lot more things I WISH we could get done before another rain moves in! I'm especially concerned about finishing weeding the strawberries before they get too far along in their bloom, since the weeds are competing with them for nutrients during this critical time. I also don't like disturbing their roots too much while they are trying to set fruit so I want that job done so that I can leave them alone to make their lovely little fruits.

And . . . the kale, pac choi, and spinach all need to be planted. And the carrots. And the turnips. And the arugula. And the onions. And I need to put up the fence around the garden across the drive. And it's time to start seeding curcurbits indoors. It must be May!

As usual, what we do this week will be very dependent on the weather. It looks like we've got a good chance of rain on Tuesday afternoon, so we may end up working on what the Wednesday group did last week--taking apart supers and frames from our beehive that died out over the winter so that we can clean them up and make them ready for re-use. That will give us an opportunity to talk a little more about bees, their importance to agriculture, and the difficulties beekeepers have been having in recent years in keeping them alive.

Here are a couple of videos that will give you a little background on Colony Collapse Disorder, which has been plaguing our honeybee populations for quite awhile now, including one on beekeeping in cities:

Marla Spivak on Colony Collapse Disorder: http://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing

Noah Wilson-Rich on Urban Beekeeping:  http://www.ted.com/talks/noah_wilson_rich_every_city_needs_healthy_honey_bees

And from PBS's Nature, a clip on the "dance-language" of bees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-8QuBDkkw

Aren't bees amazing? Honestly, when people ask me why I keep bees (or try to!) I struggle to answer. It's an expensive hobby and although we like honey a lot, that's not really the reason. Nor is pollination--our wild bees are very capable of doing that job (of course, we need to quit poisoning them too). But I think the truth is that keeping bees lets me peer into a different world, the world of insects, in an intimate way, a way that lets me try to imagine the world through their experience. It shakes up my human perspective and makes me realize how much I don't know about what's happening right under my nose in this world. The bees humble me as they amaze me.

Wednesday folks, we're going to have to see what the weather does to us. If we don't get a big soaking rain on Tuesday and the ground is drying enough by Wednesday afternoon, we'll dig into planting. If everything is soaked, we'll punt. 

See ya'll soon!

Henry's Post: problems with agricultural innovation

Just starting off with the problems behind entomophagy may not make as much sense as it could if we all had an introduction to it. It would be helpful to read Michael's post before this one just to avoid restating anything or wasting anyone's time.

This post will be focused on the barriers to entomophagy and ,in a broader context, barriers to food and agriculture innovation. 

As we have heard in the Ted Talk that Michael has shared with us, insects seem like the next place we should be turning for our protein, much of the world has already been doing this. Western cultures have been slow to adapt to this idea for many reasons. Most of which being that insects are "gross" or "yucky" as though they are any more gross than other animals that we eat. In american culture we don't like to see the sources of our protein, I'll admit that I don't like the notion that something had to die in order for me to eat and I don't like to think of the animal as I am eating. We have touched on this before but I offer to you that if we can't see the insects as "bugs" then the same yuckiness that taking a bite of a whole cow or chicken is removed. This is what many people (including us at Colony Farm) are doing within the entomophagy movement are doing.

I realize that this reasoning doesn't make sense for people who do not already eat animal protein but the plants that are grown in traditional agriculture are just as unhappy as the animals. When it comes to insects however, they are more than accustomed to crawling all over each other. High concentrations of insects is not seen as inhumane unlike chickens being crammed into tight quarters with one another or row after row of the same plants all competing with each other and breeding pests and sickness. As we have already learned from Michael, insects are a much more sustainable protein source than traditional protein. This movement is also broadening our sources of protein and could be fed on food byproducts such as wheat bran.

The following is an article posted by an Icelandic company and their struggles with legal issues in their home country, please find your way to the comment section as well:

http://www.junglebar.co/blogs/news/84694276-what-to-do-with-jungle-bar-insects-legalizeit-europe

As of now there is no such legislation in America but we expect that there might be in the near future as this movement gains more traction and starts to threaten traditional protein.

The following ink is to an FDA website that shows the tolerance of different contaminates that are allowed in our food products. The first link is to the FDA website the second is to a condensed version of just some of the ones that contain insects on Wikipedia. CONTENT WARNING: you may find his disturbing but I urge you to at least take a quick look at what you are already eating.

http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/SanitationTransportation/ucm056174.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Defect_Action_Levels

After reading these few pages lease respond to the following questions to the best of your abilities.

First I'd like to ask who of you would be willing to try insects? Who would be willing to incorporate insect protein into their daily diet? If not what are your reservations (feel free to say "'cause it's yucky")?

Part of what we are trying to do at Colony Farm is keep a conversation with the public that we intend to serve. I ask that you offer some solutions to getting around the yuck-factor of eating insects.

Speaking to the legal issues that Crowbar Protein, what is your take on this? Please also respond to a few of the comments that people have posted to that thread. Do you see that we might see anything like this in America with the entomophagy movement?

If you were able to stomach the final two links, how do you feel about the federal regulations of what is allowed in your food? How does it sit with you that companies are not required to put these ingredients on the list of what is actually in your food? 

Lastly I'd like to open up the discussion on this forum and in class as to other innovative approaches to agriculture? Please draw from your personal experiences and bring your own flavor to what these new systems would look like and how they could be implemented.

Micro Animal Husbandry, Entomophagy, & You

It's clear that there are many issues with today's agricultural industry. Our numerous discussions have tackled issues from migrant farmworker justice, the culture of food, and everything in between. For this week's discussion, I would like to address a [reemerging field of agriculture] that is gaining ground in the West. Micro animal husbandry and entomophagy stand as viable solutions to combat the growing needs of the global human population as well as the damaging pervasiveness of the established monoculture surrounding food in the US.

Watch this [TED Talk by Marcel Dicke] to understand just a few of the many reasons why we should be eating insects.

...

You back? Cool. Let's talk about that.

What are some of your initial reactions to the videos? Had you heard of entomophagy or considered eating insects prior to your time in this course? Were there any pieces of information that surprised you? Why might you still be skeptical?

As I have stated time and time again in our discussions, I feel that many of the problems with our agricultural industry are tied to a disconnect with food. In particular, we have lost many of the old, sustaining techniques and foods that our ancestors were able to thrive from. In their place, we have well-established monoculture that places a great deal of importance on efficiency at the cost of diversity and the health of the planet. I believe that entomophagy and the practice of micro animal husbandry are ways in which we can look to our past to push back against the tide of the current system while still aiming to progress as a society.

Slow, organic farming, and micro animal husbandry are just a few ways that farmers today are bringing back lost practices with the hope of benefiting humanity and the planet. What are some other ways that we can utilize the knowledge of our ancestors to this end? Do you feel like this is a viable alternative? How might we need to adapt these practices to accommodate the growing needs of the human population?

Head on over to Henry's post to discuss major issues facing the entomophagy movement as well as other innovative solutions.

Week 6 on the Farm 2016: Poetry

Weather Forecast: Tuesday, high of 64 degrees F, sunny. Wednesday, high of 50 degrees F, 50% chance of rain.

After all the rain we've had this past week, the fields and woods are really greening up around here! Now we very much need the rain to stop and the sun to shine for a few days, because it's planting time and we need to be able to work with the soil.

It sounds like Tuesday will be lovely. Tuesday folks, we'll take you out ramp foraging and then come back to the strawberry patch to see if we can't get the rest of the weeds cleared away from the plants and some compost spread around them so they'll have a good shot at producing nice berries this year.

Wednesday people, we'll have to see what the weather does. If it doesn't rain, we may try to get some plants and seeds in the ground! We may also check on our compost pile and see whether it's time to turn it.

One of the highlights of my time at the Great Lakes Intertribal Food Summit was meeting Rowen White, founder of Sierra Seeds (http://sierraseeds.org/). Here's a two and a half minute video in which she talks a bit about her approach to healing the wounds of colonization through food and seed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obx_UAAKfaE.

In one of our conversations, Rowen reminded me about the poet David Whyte, whose degree in marine zoology landed him on the Galapagos Islands. In an interview with On Being's Krista Tippet, Whyte says "I went back into poetry because I felt like scientific language wasn’t precise enough to describe the experiences that I had in Galapagos. Science, rightly, is always trying to remove the “I.” But I was really interested in the way that the “I” deepened the more you paid attention." (This isn't assigned listening/reading, but if you want to hear the whole interview,  you can find it here: http://www.onbeing.org/program/david-whyte-the-conversational-nature-of-reality/transcript/8581.)

This rings true in my experience--that there are things afoot in the world that the "objective language" of science isn't able to comprehend and express at this time. I think that may be because there are certain things that you can know only when you give up the separateness required by objectivity and enter deeply into relationship (perhaps symbiosis is another word for it, connecting back to Rowen's video). The language of poetry is better suited for this kind of knowing. And so, this week, I give you poetry:

One by Wendell Berry:


The Man Born to Farming

The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
that the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
descending in the dark?

© Wendell Berry. This poem is excerpted from "The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry,"  Counterpoint Press. (http://www.onbeing.org/program/ellen-davis-and-wendell-berry-the-poetry-of-creatures/extra/the-man-born-to-farming-by)

And two by Marge Piercy:

The Seven Of Pentacles

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us 
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

~ Marge Piercy ~

To be of use

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

from Circles on the Water. Copyright © 1982 by Marge Piercy. 

(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/57673)

As you think about moving across the threshold of graduation and into this next phase in your life, what work calls to your heart? How will you put your love to use in the world?

Week Six - Farmworker Legal Services

First, I would like to thank Abby for outlining so much of the farmworker context in her blog post.  As someone who is committed to working in solidarity with farmworker communities to bring awareness and action on issues faced by farmworkers, I’m always glad to see other folks starting conversations about farmworker justice.

Farmworkers are among the most invisible communities within the US, despite the fact that they provide each of us with an essential service – providing the food we consume every day.  As Abby illustrated, and many of you mentioned in your responses, the capitalist system is built upon the exploitation of certain groups of people.  This is certainly true in our current agricultural system, where farmworkers bear the brunt of numerous intersecting social systems – especially race and class – that cause harm to farmworkers mentally, physically, and emotionally.      

As an outcome of these intersecting systems, farmworkers face many barriers to accessing services and realizing their rights.  Potential barriers include: immigration status, not speaking English or speaking English as a second (or third) language, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, low-economic capital, low formal education levels, and transitory status.  Due to these barriers, farmworkers often find themselves in exploitative or harmful situations with little institutional support.

These barriers are the reason Farmworker Legal Services (FLS) exists.  FLS is a legal aid office based in Kalamazoo that provides free and confidential legal services to migrant and seasonal farmworkers across the state of Michigan.  In addition to the legal work that the FLS attorneys conduct, FLS also has an active outreach program through which we try to locate and connect with as many farmworkers and their families as possible.  Due to the nature of farmwork, in addition to the intent of many growers to “hide” their employees, farmworker housing is often very isolated and difficult to locate.  Throughout the growing season, FLS staff and interns visit camps four nights a week – speaking with workers about any concerns or issues they might be experiencing, as well as sharing our informational resources.

One resource that I invite you all to look through before class on Thursday is the FLS Calendar.  This calendar is the base of all our outreach because it provides detailed information about farmworker rights in both Spanish and English.  As you look through the calendar, are there any pages that stick out to you?  Why?  Do you see anything that surprises you?

Once FLS has made contact with a worker who has a question or concern, we begin to investigate their situation and develop a strategy about how to address their issue.  The strategy depends on each client’s specific situation and might include a legal process like making a housing complaint to the MI Department of Agricultural and Rural Development or bring a case to trial, or it might simply mean referring them to another agency, such as Intercare (a community health care organization) or the Department of Health and Human Services (for help receiving food stamps, child care and other public benefits), and then following-up to make sure they have received the necessary help.   As I will discuss more in-depth with you during Thursday’s session, FLS handles a wide-range of cases.  For some context on types of issues FLS deals with, please take a look at this Michigan Radio report about migrant housing conditions and this just released WMUK Radio report on a current FLS case regarding whether the minimum wage will continue to cover farmworkers.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on these two reports.    

While farmworkers are often invisible to much of the greater US, they are actively organizing and fighting for their rights.  This article, “Farm Workers Are Taking On Poor Pay And Conditions — And Winning,” highlights some of the successful work of farmworker organizers around the country.  Have you heard about any these examples before?  Why might be some reasons they have been successful and what could we learn from their efforts? 

Additionally, here are some other of innovative ways that try to address abuses against farmworkers. Fair Food Standards Council and Food Justice Certification are two organizations/coalitions that encourage farmers to become certified as ”just” employers, meaning that their products were raised/harvested in ways that protect the dignity and rights of farmworkers.  What do you think of these programs?  To what extent do you think they are effective in changing the culture of exploitation around farmworkers?

Finally, I just want to include these two articles for you to read because I think they give some interesting perspectives on farmwork – “How the produce aisle looks to a migrant farmworker” and “What's it like to be a migrant farmworker?”  

Please bring any and all questions, thoughts, and reactions you have to our meeting Thursday - I’m looking forward to talking with you all then!