Bringing Fresh Produce to Urban Locations

Hey everyone, I saw a video on Facebook and thought some of you might find it interesting!

A man named Irving Fain started a business in New Jersey called Bowery Farming and the organization grows clean produce in warehouses right outside cities. You can learn more about it here. 

Transitioning to Local Food on a Budget

Looking further into buying local and eating in season, I found a blog from the Kalamazoo Farmer’s Market website. Alyssa Pumford gives great advice on how to shop local and essentially eat healthy on a budget. I know personally, eating healthy and sometimes local can be difficult because of the price of products. As a poor college student, buying a snack like Cheetos for $1.50 seems to make a lot more sense for my wallet than buying organic sunflower seeds for $7.99. However, Pumford gives great tips for eating clean within a budget.

To start, going in with a grocery list and only buying what you need are two important ways to not blow your budget. Buying things that don’t go bad quickly in bulk can also be helpful. Pumford also says that produce with thicker skins like cantaloupe and bananas take longer to go bad, so those are produce you should be more inclined to buy. Buying foods that are not pre-packaged, pre-cut or pre-washed go hand in hand with cutting down on sugar and processed foods, which Pumford also warns about. Finally, making your own snacks like trail mix instead of buying snacks (like beloved Cheetos) will be healthier for you and you’ll appreciate the snack more.

Pumford’s blog post gave lots of helpful informations about eating clean on a budget and doing effective meal prepping. I would highly recommend it for people interested in starting the movement to buying more local and in-season food!

10 Steps to Becoming a Locavore

As Audrey and I are continuing to research growing local and eating in season, I found “10 Steps to Becoming a Locavore” easy to read and straightforward. The article was from PBS by the author Jennifer Maiser. She is the editor of a website called “Eating Local Challenge” which has some great resources to help people begin to eat local. She also makes eating local sound feasible when she explains “The great thing about eating local is that it's not an all-or-nothing venture. Any small step you take helps the environment, protects your family's health and supports small farmers in your area.” Most of the steps in her list of 10 have links to help people get started on their local food journey, whether it be finding local farms to visit or finding CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) sign-ups near you. From going to your local farmer’s markets to finding restaurants around you that use local food, Maiser’s list of locavore possibilities made eating local sound appealing and easy to start doing.

Thoughts on the Minimalism Mindset

This weekend I watched Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. I was already planning on going through my clothes to downsize my wardrobe for a weekend project, so I figured watching the documentary along with this would motivate me to get rid of more while also getting educated on reducing material needs.

The Minimalists, Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Fields Millburn

The whole concept behind minimalism, according to Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, is “Is this adding value to my life?” As Americans living in a world consumed by capitalism, we are surrounded by greed and the constant mindset that we need to outdo each other with material possessions. However, the common theme with every person throughout the documentary was finding that money does indeed not buy happiness. From tiny homes and small-scale living to buying less and minimizing clothing collections, people had several ways to see what really held value in their lives.

Carver Demonstrating Project 333

Interestingly enough, as I was going through the 27 t-shirts I can’t seem to get rid of, something called Project 333 was brought up. Essentially, a woman named Courtney Carver decided to reduce her wardrobe to 33 items total and wear them for 3 months. She was worried colleagues and peers would notice she re-wore all her clothes and that they would think less of her. However, she found most people didn’t even notice. Although I didn’t limit my clothing and accessories to 33 items yet, I was still inspired to make an effort toward that point.

The minimalist mindset seems like one of the most attainable first steps in sustainability, and to close, I picked two quotes from the documentary that stuck with me and pushed me to work towards a minimalist lifestyle:

“If I had to revise the American dream, it would be more about coming together and community. It would be more about a society which had much less inequality and more fairness in which everybody had a chance; that is responsible toward the planet and our ecosystem. To me, that would be an American dream.”

“Love people and use things, because the opposite never works.”

Buying Local and How it Effects Communities

MLA Citation:

Mcintyre, Lynn, and Krista Rondeau. "Individual consumer food localism: A review anchored in Canadian farmwomen’s reflections." Journal of Rural Studies 27.2 (2011): 116-24. Web.

This was used in the study showing how gender effects food provisioning

Essentially, Mcintyre and Rondeau’s study was done in Canada on buying local food and how it impacts communities. Growing and buying food locally, whether that be in farmers markets or grocery stores, ends up being a healthier option. People in this study really stressed the importance of and for food self-provisioning (providing and making food for oneself). Three main points to take away from this article included: 1) How location of farmers markets effects buying local, 2) How the cost of buying local or growing one’s own food may not be financially feasible, and 3) How gender roles effect the preparation of food and how it could effect growing one’s own food.

Six Degrees: The Second Degree

I noticed Six Degrees’ chapters are essentially arranged in little horror stories that occur when the global temperature rises one degree. Chapter two touches on the following: China’s Thirsty Cities, Acidic Oceans, The Mercury Rises in Europe, Mediterranean Sunburn, The Coral and the Ice Cap, Last Stand of the Polar Bear, Indian Summer, Peru’s Melting Point, Sun and Snow in California, Feeding the Eight Billion, and Silent Summer.

Save the plankton! 

The case study I found most interesting was the Acidic Oceans section. I had never put much thought into how global warming would effect the life in our oceans, let alone what the animals in the oceans do for us. Lynas cites a biology professor from Denmark who stated “These marine creatures do humanity a great service by absorbing half the carbon dioxide we create. If we wipe them out, that process will stop. We are altering the entire chemistry of the oceans without any idea of the consequences” (p. 78). Phytoplankton is suffering because of climate change, and as a vital part of the ocean ecosystem, this is distressing. If we ruin our oceans, they won’t be there to help us in the future.

I do agree with Shannon and Nick in the sense that Lynas does focus on case studies, but in doing so never really seems to hold humans accountable for their contributions to the Earth’s decaying. I felt less guilty for all of the issues pointed out because they either seemed to be natural biological processes or too far away to relate to. Other than that critique, I found the chapter intriguing.

To close, I’ll highlight the five concepts I found most interesting from this chapter:

1. Large continents like Asia are usually one degree higher than the global average (p. 75), so technically when we suffer from the effects of the global temperature raising two degrees, places like Asia will have it worse than most.
2. We need to protect phytoplankton! They serve many functions in the ocean’s ecosystem, but the acid in the oceans AND the raise in heat are both killing them. (p.78)
3. By 2040, summers like the heatwave in Paris that caused thousands of deaths will be more common. (p.61)
4. “California will no longer be the Golden State once global warming begins to bite.” (p. 110)
5. “We are living through what biologists have termed the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth...” (p.114)

Ishmael Ch. 10-13

I felt these last few chapters of Ishmael did a nice job of bringing all Ishmael’s ideas full circle to the narrator, and the narrator finally became fully receptive. From Ishmael describing us as “cultural amnesiacs” to letting the narrator explore his own thoughts, this last segment did a nice job of wrapping things up.

I found it interesting that when the narrator wanted to learn more about the Leavers, Ishmael wouldn’t accept “why not learn about them?” as an answer.

“Why? That’s what I keep coming back to. Why, why, why? Why should your people know what story they’re enacting as they destroy the world?”

“So they can stop enacting it. So they can see that they’re not just blundering as they do what they do. So they can see that they’re involved in a megalomaniac fantasy— a fantasy as insane as the Thousand Year Reich.” (pg. 213)

I think it’s important to want to actively learn and truly understand other viewpoints other than your own because it can strengthen what you already believe. However, more importantly, it can point out flaws and holes in your own beliefs and ways of thinking, leading you to learn and grow and fix things in your own life. Ishmael forcing the narrator to realize this and think this way was an important part of changing the narrator’s perspective, leading him to become more of a critical thinker and less of a student.

Ishmael made a difference by discussing thoughts and concepts about humanity with the narrator, and it changed the narrator’s life. This really speaks to student and teacher relationships in that the only way we’re truly going to change is by talking to each other and learning from each other. Now that the narrator is changed, he can take on a teacher-type roll and educate others. The only way for change to occur is for us all to talk to each other, share experiences, and most importantly, listen.