Author Archives: ahujan2

Salish Center Group Project

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This course was a learning experience in how to deal with stress and uncertain times. Like also it shed a tremendou light on how our food system works. I was incredibly surprised how many times I would be excited to talk to my friends or family about what I am learning. The reason for that is during COVID food is on a lot of people’s minds. Whether we will have food in our grocery store the next day or month, etc. 

 

Going into the group project I was excited to see what I could do to help a food NGO and apply the knowledge I learned in class. That’s why I wanted to do the Salish center as my group project as I love seafood tremendously. I wanted to learn how a NGO can impact seafood supply chains. We had our first set of meetings and were able to get the goals from our advisor Riley Starks, The Executive Director of Salish Center. He talked about how the Salish Center goals which were the following:

  • PDO (Protected Designation of Origin)
  • Increased consumer knowledge of their seafood’s source. 
  • Long term goal of protecting the Salish Sea.
  • Promote regional food

Learning about these goals we had a set number of objectives. Riley wanted us to contact as much outside organizations such as churches, companies, restaurants etc to gain funding and lobbying towards Salish Center efforts. Also he wanted us to bolster the NGO social media. When doing the objectives I could not feel motivated. My work was to find the churches in Seattle and surrounding cities and contact them. I got zero contact back from the churches or anyone for the matter and it was demoralizing. Also felt like I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the events happening around me.

 

I learnt from the group project about my worst and what it means to deal with tremendous stress from other parts of my life. My regret is not figuring out a way to deal with that stress to help my group members in a manner that is representative of my best. I hope that this class serves as a lesson in how to deal with uncertain times and hopefully I grow from it. 

Restaurants during COVID-19

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Blog Post 2

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/world/europe/coronavirus-inequality.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/27/magazine/david-chang-restaurants-covid19.html

One of the contemplative practices that we learnt in class is analyzing the international trade and global inequalities through food and food systems. The restaurant industry is a good example of this especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic the restaurant industry has been hit quite hard. Restaurants lost most of their demand for their food overnight. They were considered non-essential services and couldn’t dine in customers anymore. As a result most restaurants had to consider whether to close their restaurant or offer delivery. 

This information might be irrelevant to thinking about inequality. Lets just picture the University Ave. It’s a street filled with our favorite food and drink places. It would not be an unlikely scenario that after the pandemic is over that a good amount of restaurants on the Ave would be closed permanently. Those are the restaurants that thrive on having an influx of college students dining in and also taking out food. The ones that will survive are the ones that adapted to delivery apps or contact less take out as famous restaurateur David Chang said in an interview with the NY Times. That’s the real inequality in the restaurant industry, who is able to adapt faster than the other. As Individuals what can we do? I would like to think we love food and love our local restaurants. What can we do to prevent our favorite places from closing especially those that are struggling to adapt to the changes. Buy gift cards from the place and get take out as much as you can if they offer it. I want to come out of this crisis knowing that my local communities have their favorite food still readily available.

Is COVID 19 going to create a food crisis?

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https://www.ifpri.org/blog/will-covid-19-cause-another-food-crisis-early-review

This article takes an early look on the question in whether COVID 19 will create a food crisis. Johan Swinnen, the author, argues it depends on the wealth of an individual and there is no global answer. The more poor you are the more likely to be in a food crisis and if you are wealthy you are probably not going to be in a food crisis.

They argue this based on four main points:

  1. Falling income and and food and nutrition security
    1. Food consumption and as a result nutrition would be reduced during this crisis.
    2. The fall of income caused this as access to food becomes limited to people with loss of income due to the COVID crisis. 
  2. Disruption of private value chains
    1. Harvesting is disrupted due to lack of labor and materials needed such as fertilizers and seeds. 
    2. This disportinonaly affects small and medium sized businesses in which the poor depend on for food.
  3. Disruptions in public sector programs
    1. Many poor people depended on school feeding programs for reliable access to food.
    2. Public food relief programs risk people being exposed to the virus.
  4. Limited government capacity to compensate
    1. Developing countries focused their resources on healthcare and essential goods and services.
    2. The result is that people from developing nations can’t rely on their government for compensation or help.

All of these points drive in the narrative that a food crisis is going to be on the world’s hand for a while. It is not just going to affect developing nations more but any segment of the world’s population that has their income affected and access affected. This blog gives any individual a perspective in why it’s important to make sweeping policies changes in food security.