Throughout my life, my relationship with food has changed drastically. I would try different meals, suddenly finding them delicious and adding them to my palette. I worked on an organic orchard for two summers, so my view on where food comes from and the painstaking hours it takes to procure was enhanced. Everyone has a relationship with food, but lately, the general population has found fast, quick meals to be ideal. My project for this class was investigating “slow food” and all it pertains to. Slow food is a movement that promotes traditional, homestyle cooking with everyone gathering down to enjoy a meal as a collective unit (family, friends, etc.). When I first started this project, I didn’t realize the implications of what slow food hopes to do, but as I read into it more, I was impressed. Slow food hopes to connect us to our food and make eating less of a task to check off a checklist. But what really is “eating”?

A farmer’s market, an ideal promoted and endorsed by Slow Food for its linkage to your food.

In his article, The Pleasures of Eating, Wendell Berry investigates how the notion of “eating” in our society has changed, as well as the decline of American farming and rural life. I feel like this article and the ideals portrayed in it really connect to my action project. Our goal as a group was to investigate how slow food wants people to focus more on familial customs, homecooked meals, and such. It roots its beliefs in preserving the culture behind cooking, seeing it as not just something to “feed your faces” (as my mother would say), but as a way of sharing the history of your people through the sensation of taste. The Pleasures of Eating share in this sentiment, as seen by the title. Berry states that, “The industrial eater no longer knows or imagines the connections between eating and the land, and is therefore passive and uncritical—in short, a victim” (Berry, 2009). This is the kind of thing the Slow Food Movement wants to change. You should know where your food comes from, which is why they promote farmer’s markets (so you can converse with your growers).

Other known benefits of slow food and embracing the culture of eating is that reduced mono-culture enhances the environment by promoting healthy soil and diffuses the reliance on factory farms.

I want to end this with a quote from the founder of Slow Food, Carlo Petrini:

“Slow food has the aim of defending our extraordinary food heritage, the expression of territories, and cultures alike” (Petrini, 2013).

References:

Berry, Wendell. (2009). The Pleasures of Eating, 11-15. Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/alexi/Downloads/Berry,%20Pleasures%20of%20Eating%20(1).pdf

Petrini, Carlo. (2013) Slow Food and Terra Madre, Video. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqdzvQ2wpO0&t=162s

Racial discrimination in the 21st century is a phenomenon that embarrassed us in the world as a democratic nation with a strong government system. with all assets, government systems, and rule of law in our country, we still have this systematic racism in both theoretical concepts and reality. Theoretically, racism is dated back to the foundation of our country (United States) which was founded as a racist nation. To look at racism through our course content we observe in the food supply chain, that systematic racism is embedded in all food supply chains, as we study only this small portion of the business, considering this as an example, and witnessing the recent event (Gorge Floyd death) which triggered the mass movement. We can say that racism is present in all structures, institutions, as well as social relations in our society which goes back to our past system and unjust history that privileged one race or another.

In our country, the word of racism has a very close connection with the antiblack practices, where the white supremacy ideology came from the unequal political and economic power of whites, which rationalized white power over black. The recent mass movement around the country pushed me to dig deeper in the racism issue and I came to know that this issue is a controversial topic even in our justice system which shows when it comes to black people cases the justice system acts partially with prejudice and tends to punish black people more.

To study racism in the field of food and agriculture we witness one way or another visible racism in both food and agricultural system, our capitalist food system is fixed but unjust and unsustainable, because the power is disproportionately concentrated in the hand of racially privileged groups. The rate of black landowners in the nation is very small percent compared to white, and the rate of losing black race farmland is twice than the losing white race farmland. Where the white farmers dominate as operator-owners from the start to the end the people of color with the poverty wages, where the resulting poverty from the low paid job is racialized. Among those portions of people who live below the poverty line in the US black people is the big chunk of it, which results in high levels of food insecurity. Poverty and food insecurity have close ties with diet-related diseases and make these people more vulnerable and unsafe in our society.

I sit here reflecting upon my final quarter in college, and what a ride it was. Usually, over the course of these ten weeks, I would be stressing out about what exams I need to take, or what homework assignment I need to meet the deadline for, but this was so much more than that. I had to worry about the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic recession and getting laid off, and of course the fight to end the continued oppression of people of color in America. This has easily been the most chaotic time in my life, and I am sure this is the same for many. I just want to congratulate everyone for surviving and making it through this quarter!

Shellfish Aquaculture heavily relies on the use of PVC pipes, which has some major implications on the nearby environment.

For my action project, I had the chance to work with the Center for Food Safety (CFS) on developing a scorecard to grade shellfish aquaculture on their practices based on multiple criteria. Right off the bat, it really surprised me on how many aspects you could grade a shellfish aquaculture operation on. I previously had done research on geoduck aquaculture in a different class, but it was not that in-depth and it only focused on the ecological impacts, so this was a whole new experience to me. It really felt nice being part of something that could benefit the whole community, as this scorecard could really make a difference in the shellfish aquaculture industry.

While researching for this project and looking at the projects the CFS works on, it really occurred to me that the food industry still has a long way to go. If you go on the CFS website, you can see all the projects they are currently working on, and there is a lot! The CFS even has an app that allows you to dive deeper than the label on products, and to tell you if the food is truly organic and gmo-free. Why do we need all this? Shouldn’t there be 100% transparency on all of the food we are putting in our bodies? Maybe one day we will achieve that, but until then the fight continues to make sure that we keep companies accountable for what they are putting in our bodies.