Diving In

“The kind of society that would waste this much food is one that doesn't value the earth or the products it produces. It's in our own personal detriment to continue the process.” -Dr. Timothy Jones

Every year in America we throw away 96 billion pounds of food. 

The meal consisted of pasta with cream sauce, spinach, and chicken and a salad made from lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, and green onions. We did not pay a dime for it, the taste was fantastic and the produce was fresh and... It all came from the dumpster.

 

I was first introduced to dumpster diving after watching the documentary Dive! and was horrified with how much food we waste in the United States and Europe. I was shocked by how many people would not go hungry if we reduced our food waste.

The Department of Agriculture estimated in 1996 that recovering just 5 percent of the food that is wasted could feed four million people a day; recovering 25 percent would feed 20 million people. Today we recover less than 2.5 percent. 

Farmer, Farm, Farming, Food: Trends in book references

I have asked several friends and family members to help me with writing some guest blog posts to offer different perspectives and add voices to the dialogue I hope to create through this blog.

Recently, my husband, Nicholas (check out his blog here!), has taken a significant interest in the data you can pull from the work I am interested in.  He is very intrigued by how the data shows our disconnect from the land, our food and those amazing people who help put said food on our plates - farmers!  While I have been blogging away on my research and activism, Nick has been pulling stats and reveling in all of the data you can find related to food and farming.

I am posting one of his recent search results which shows a disturbing lack of interest in where our food comes from, how it is grown and who grows it.

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Farmer, Farm, Farming, Food: Trends in book references since 1820

I happened across a TED talk about a tool that Google built that allows you to search a series of words across the ~15 million books that they have scanned. I was interested to see what people have been saying over time regarding the “farmer”, their “farm”, the act of “farming”, and “food”. I was hoping to find some interesting data but what I found was more interesting than I expected.

Here is the graph from the data:

No Small Potatoes

This past quarter I decided to change things up in my classes and look more closely at grassroots movements and resistance outside the United States.  I had never studied Latin America and have found the culture surrounding food in the Americas fascinating.  The work being done in Latin America surrounding fair trade, shade grown, the banning of GE products, co-ops and more is phenomenal.  I feel because more money is spent on food by people in lower socioeconomic groups, these are the people the most aware of food politics and the centrality of food to life.  

I specifically wanted to focus on the recent banning of GE products from Peru in a record setting case placing a moratorium on all GE products for the next ten years.  I wanted to include information on the centrality of the potato to Peruvian culture as well.  While there has not been a GE potato developed at this point, I believe the immense importance of preserving the biodiversity of this central crop to Peruvian culture played into the involvement of Peruvian farmers and peasants in the resistance movement against Monsanto and other GE corporations.

While this tuber may seem humble in many ways, it is of vital importance to cultures, food sources, economies and biodiversity.  It became the nickname for a war, caused a tragic famine and secondary massive migration of Irish immigrants and is an incredibly popular children's toy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Potato_Head).  The potato is not humble by any stretch of the imagination!

No Small Potatoes by rtomczek

Always bringing it back to food... (The Journey Part 5)

I started my final year in the MACS program in September 2012 with a core/required class revisiting the work of Stuart Hall and diving deeper into the layers of cultural studies.  Every chapter of the book we read, Representation, I attempted to find ties to my research within food activism and food spaces.  For some of the assignments it was nearly impossible to find pieces of cultural criticism where someone (or some people) is (are) questioning the politics of representation in the way that the authors do in the Hall book.  It was extremely easy to find data to critique, but the reverse was much more difficult.

I have included here the assignments I was able to relate to food with some critiques of my own work.

Potato or Tomato?
Seacrest, R., Oliver, J., Norris, R., Smith, B., Fresh One Productions., Ryan Seacrest Productions.,

      Channel Ten (Television station), ... American Broadcasting Company. (2010). Jamie Oliver's food 

      revolution.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/us/foundation/jamies-food-revolution/home

For my next question...

At the end of each week of summer camp I composed a letter to three different parents, for a grand total of nine parents, in the hopes of speaking with them about their kids' experience at camp and other questions related to food topics.

I heard from four parents and over the last part of the summer journeyed to coffee shops and homes to conduct my interviews.  I also spoke with three stakeholders involved in the work WAS (Wilderness Awareness School) and Oxbow are doing.  The point of the interviews was to gain a greater perspective of how the relationship between WAS and Oxbow was formed, what the goals of the partnership were and what they hoped the future of the partnership would look like.  From the parents I wanted to understand why sending their kids to 'farm camp' was so important, how they felt their kids had benefited from attending the camp and what they would potentially change about the camp.  In every interview I asked several key questions regarding food and the interviewee's feelings about different food issues.

Dog Mountain Farm

For spring quarter 2012 I chose to yet again step outside the easy boundaries of my project and look further than alternative learning environments and food.  I chose to take a class on Tourism as Global Culture and chose to focus my work in this class on the rapidly rising agritourist form of literally consuming the tourist experience.

I began searching for an agritourist site in the Seattle area and discovered Dog Mountain Farm.  I sent an e-mail to Cindy Krepky explaining my project and asking for an opportunity to visit the farm and experience the space as an agritourist destination.  From the very beginning, David and Cindy, were wonderfully receptive to having my husband and I out to visit and experience all that Dog Mountain Farm had to offer.

Dog Mountain Farm - free slideshow maker with music

The Journey (Part 3)

One of the best revelations which has happened to me throughout this journey is recognizing how important activism is to me.  Specifically, food activism.  Through the internships I have completed, the projects I have created, the people I have met and the spaces I have seen I have begun to realize that policy changes and social action is where the majority of change will occur in the food system.  How to become involved though?

A food movement is sweeping this country and people are ready for a change in our food system.  This was never more clear than during this past year's election when California added Proposition 37 (Prop 37) to the ballot in the hopes of passing a law requiring all products containing GMOs (genetically modified organism) be labeled, allowing customers the right to make an informed decision regarding the type of food they purchase.  Specifically whether said food contains genetically modified materials.  Sadly, Prop 37 was defeated after major corporations such as Monsanto, DuPont and Hershey threw millions of dollars (grand total of $44 million) at 'No to Prop 37'.  To me this raises huge red flags; if companies are throwing millions of dollars for an initiative to fail, especially an initiative asking for consumers to be provided with knowledge and information, I want to believe that the public would be even more concerned with understanding why companies would not want them to know what is in their food!

The Beginning...

I honestly do not remember when we first watched Food, Inc. (2009), however, I do remember several things:

• Watching with our dear friends, Tim and Lindsay
• The ending song and statements brought tears to my eyes
• The documentary was the first one I had watched that really opened my eyes to the corruptness of the food industry and how important supporting local businesses was.
• I began to recognize the disparities in  the food system and question if the 'obesity crisis' was really about education and health or if it was more about capitalism and putting money in large corporations pockets.

I continued to watch Food, Inc. over the years and throughout our food journey; the ending song and statements still brought tears to my eyes, but I began to see things in the documentary that troubled me.  Most recently, a professor, Katie Gillespie, showed Food, Inc. on the first day of class for Animals, Ethics and Food: Deconstructing Dominant Discourse and I wrote a journal entry where I finally reflected on Food, Inc. and the portions that troubled me.