This week I focused on readings that provided additional context to hunger and community growing so as to go into research about college-specific issues with more knowledge. I also used this chance to notice the elements mentioned in Skim, Dive, Surface by Jenea Cohn and to further develop some of my ideas surrounding digital reading and food access. My readings this week were; “From Dirt” by Camille T. Dungy, “If All the Stores Close, We Need Foodʼ: Community Gardens Adapt to the Pandemic” by Rachel Wharton, and the Introduction and Chapter 12 of Global Food Futures by Brian Gardener.
The styles of each of these readings were very different, but I was able to draw a lot of parallels between the issues and events that each of them discussed and access to texts through digitization. While reading “From Dirt” by Camile T. Dungy I created my own metaphor that parallels food access and knowledge access using Dungy’s own story with seeds. It has really stuck with me and I am hoping to make it understandable and explainable by the end of the quarter, as I think it could be a really great way for food studies students to think about digital reading and information access. It also made me really want to develop better writing practices so I may wrote something publishable about my ideas one day. I wonder what Cohn has to say about digital journalism?
Global Food Futures by Brian Gardener – Introduction: Does the world face a continuous “food crisis”? & Chapter 12: Access to food
In the introductory chapter of his book, Brian Gardener seeks to help the reader understand the nuances of the global food system specifically as they were impacted by economic changes between 2006 and 2012, the time-sensitive production and distribution improvements needed to keep up with the rise in population, and the inevitable issue of climate change and its impact on agriculture and food distribution across the globe.
Early on Gardener identifies two outlooks on the future of global food production, stating “There are two current views of the future world food supply and demand situation—the pessimistic and the optimistic. The pessimistic view that the world’s agricultural resources are overstretched and incapable of meeting rising demand for an increasing population is currently the accepted opinion, but there is gathering evidence to support a more optimistic conclusion. The optimistic view is that science and improved husbandry can maintain increased output at a level needed to feed a 30 percent increase in global population.”
He identifies the reasoning of the pessimists, with a big contributor being issues of oil, energy, and climate change restrictions, but notes that “It has been estimated that the world’s farms need to produce 70–100 percent more food by the second half of the current century, despite climate change, energy scarcity, and regional dietary shifts” and in-text it feels very much as if he is saying “we can’t afford to be pessimistic or slow down”. In both the introductory chapter and chapter 12 Gardner references sub-Saharan Africa as a place in desperate need of food assistance, their issues stemming from land use decisions, climate change, lack of market access and food distribution availability, and degrading practices of other countries. It seems to be the most comprehensive example of a “food needy” country as Gardener would put it, and yet he argues that the issue is not in their food supply.
Gardener argues that the issue of hunger across the globe stems from the improper distribution of food rather than a lack of food in the food system overall. While he makes many references to our need to increase how much food our agricultural system produces, he makes sure to nail down where the biggest barrier is in solving hunger. “Clear evidence shows that the world “food problem” remains distributional and developmental rather than because of a long-term inability to increase output.”
It is with this idea that Gardener begins to defend his optimistic view and provide his solutions for long-term food system sustainability, and it is here I was able to draw some parallels between digital reading and food access. Within his idea that the implementation and support of biotechnology in developing countries, you can draw the same conclusions as you do with the support and implementation of digitizing technology, both of which require the support of someone with more wealth or power who may not directly see the rewards of their actions. In Gardeners’ words “Adequate agricultural infrastructure, including access to markets for inputs and for the sale of surplus, is essential to ensure food supplies.” For human progression and societal development, people need access to information as they do food, one for the survival of our bodies and one for the survival of our society, which is really one and the same.
“If All the Stores Close, We Need Foodʼ: Community Gardens Adapt to the Pandemic” by Rachel Wharton
In this New York Times article Rachel Warton tells the story of food access through community gardens in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the article itself was only a few pages in length it told stories from all across the country of community gardens adapting to the new reality as their communities need for food grew but their resources decreased. This article was published on April 10th 2020, less than a month after the first federal Covid guidelines went into effect on March 15th, and it feels like some of the most important agricultural records we have of the pandemic, a collection of thoughts from the organizers and staff members of the gardens that fed their communities through the pandemic.
This article had an abundance of touching quotes from organizers across the country but I was particularly taken by this one:
“Marguerite Green, the executive director of a New Orleans nonprofit group called Sprout Nola, is preparing for the day gardens have to replace grocery stores altogether. “I’m worried we won’t be able to get fresh food other than locally,” said Ms. Green, 31, who has seen food scarcity before. She was a senior in high school when Hurricane Katrina shut down her city in 2005, and recalls weeks of eating nothing but M.R.E.s, the instant meals prepared for the military. Ms. Green went on to get a degree in vegetable production before joining Sprout Nola, which runs its own community garden and helps support several others. “I didn’t want to be in that position again,” said Ms. Green, who put together a series of plans within days of Louisiana’s shelter-in-place rule on March 12, which also shuttered farmers’ markets.”
The early pandemic felt a lot like the book “Bird Box”, a disaster that could only hurt you if you looked at it. Or if someone else looked at it and came too close to you. You never looked out the window and saw a forest fire caused by COVID, the world looked the same but emptier. A natural disaster must weigh on you in a way unknown to those who haven’t experienced such mass destruction. As I read this and reread this I wondered how the memory of M.R.E’s impacted Ms. Greens actions as she adapted to feed her community throughout the pandemic.
Those able to provide for themselves were inarguably better prepared for the pandemic, and it made me think about how we can best prepare ourselves and our schools for all modes and contexts of learning, how does digital reading play into societal adaptation, and how will it hold up to the test of time?
“From Dirt” by Camille T. Dungy
This essay was an absolutely phenomenal piece of writing that combined BIPOC agricultural history with the author’s personal history and connection with the topic, as well as making clear how intersectionally infinite the topic of agriculture is, and why we must approach it with that in mind. It is while reading this that I developed a new metaphor for demonstrating and visualizing the parallels between food studies and digital reading.
I began to develop it when Dungy talked about heirloom Cherokee seeds sent to her through the mail for the price of postage. I wrote in my annotation “Seeds as a non-textual source of generational knowledge? Seeds can’t be digitized, but the research from them can, what is the seed and what is the learning? The bite and the taste? The meal and the emotion?” This idea of “the bite and the taste” stuck with me as I kept reading, and I kept wondering how this idea of the seed and the growth played into the overall narrative of it all. When you have a text, you read and you absorb in quick succession, when you eat you take a bite and taste in the same way. While the source can be consumed again we only absorb it for the first time once, and set our opinions often based on the initial intake.
How does the seed play into this idea? Seeds have no authors, but they have planters and caretakers, you can’t regrow a vegetable but you can always regrow the same plant. You sow the seed, and then you grow the result, the knowledge gained is an equal reward to the product itself. This part of the metaphor I am still figuring out, but I am happy with the direction it is going, and even if I only fully flush out the “bite-taste to read-absorb” section this quarter that I am still very excited to see where this goes, I am incredibly pleased with it already.
Later in the essay Dungy talks about the restrictions Thomas Jefferson enforced on enslaved people that dictated what they could and couldn’t grow in their own fields, citing a letter in which he says “There is no other way of drawing a line between what is theirs and mine,”. As Dungy wrote about how she thinks on this as she grows whatever she pleases in her gardens, I thought on how this relates to modern-day book banning, censorship of information in public schools and libraries, and its connection to improving access to learning through the digitization of texts and learning materials. How does this “crop elitism” as I might call it, mirror present information access and what can we take from history that could help us remove barriers in education?
Next week will be focused on readings that present issues of student hunger as well as proposed and in practice on campus solutions.