Category Archives: Food Systems

Take Time To Stop and Smell the Bok Choi

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by Wesley Sexton

Farm Interns 2014This Summer I had the unique opportunity to intern at the CUE Farm, and as part of my job I was charged with a few of the meticulous and labor-intensive responsibilities involved in growing fresh food. On the CUE Farm I learned very quickly that cultivating healthful food takes a lot of time and a lot of attention. My work this summer forced me to slow down and devote my contemplative energies toward the foods that we eat.

Of course, as a result, I have been able to learn about urban agriculture; but I also found myself confronted with questions that had lain unformed in my brain before this experience. Questions like: “Where does my food come from?” and “Does quantity trump quality in the food world?” suddenly wriggled themselves into my mind.

I have by no means been able to find comprehensive answers to these questions or many of the others that formed during my time on the CUE Farm. But the fact that these questions found their way into my mind certainly exhibits a depth of awareness that I did not previously possess before this summer. I now find myself becoming skeptical of foods at the grocery store – peppers shipped from Mexico or raspberries fallen to mold during the long ride over from California.

Amidst the vague questions still floating around in my mind, two things about urban agriculture seem quite clear:

  1. Locally grown produce will inevitably be fresher and healthier than produce shipped halfway across the country; and
  2. Considering the number of people currently living in cities or other places where fresh produce is somewhat unavailable, innovative approaches to growing fresh food must be sought out.

And perhaps with the right social environment, urban farming can help people gain access to locally grown, quality produce.

Although the CUE Farm and other urban farms like it often operate on a very small scale, the argument may be made that cultivating a smaller yield in a responsible way is preferable to the opposite approach. Personally, I believe that fresh, organic produce is an investment that is well worth the extra time spent. If more time and attention are paid to the substances with which we choose to energize our lives, I do not think that time and energy will have been misplaced.

Wesley Sexton is an English and Music major at Butler University, Class of 2016. 

Cooking Knowledge as Key to Healthy Food Systems

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by Nic Mink

foodfellowfromscratchcookingOne of my favorite lines from Wendell Berry comes from his essay, The Pleasures of Eating, an instructive piece that offers a stinging rebuke of the industrial food system and outlines guidelines for more thoughtful eating.

“That they,” he writes of the food industry, “do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into our mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so….The ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his or her stomach.”

In re-conceptualizing my Sustainable Food Systems class this spring, I took Berry’s line to heart, as I thought of ways to ensure that my students would never find themselves strapped to a table with a tube running directly into their stomach! This resulted in the creation of three gastronomy labs, created in partnership with Maggie Hanna, the executive director of Fall Creek Gardens Urban Growers Resource Center.

The labs sought to provide hands-on lessons about the science, history, and culture of food, all while instructing students in food preparation. Over the course of the semester, we ended up cooking fish and chips, macaroni and cheese, and gumbo, all from scratch. In the process, we interrogated ingredients, examined labels, and explored personal conceptions of health and well-being.

These labs were some of the most rewarding I have ever instructed and they taught me many lessons.

First, despite the fact that most of my students had a real interest in eating “healthy,” most of them had never considered that healthy eating included the necessity of cooking their own food from scratch. Healthy, to many of them, simply meant ensuring that food had the proper number of calories (few) and the right amount of fat (even less).

Second, the labs also taught me that most of my students had never actually cooked a meal from scratch. Ever. In their two decades of existence, they had always relied on others—parent, fast food chains, sit-down restaurants, or a school cafeteria—to provide their nourishment.

The process of cooking with students (and learning these lessons) suggested, to me at least, the value of making culinary and nutrition education a core part of any college curriculum. Not only can you teach just about any subject through cooking, but you can also provide an outlet for creativity and an avenue to build interdisciplinary connections.

At the end of the semester, one of my students remarked that these labs were the best classes he’d ever had. While it would be nice to pin this success on Maggie and I’s uncanny abilities as educators, in reality I think the remarks this student made reflects the power of food to build community, nourish our souls, and teach us that immense and profound happiness can be found in cooking with one another.

Nicolaas Mink, PhD is the urban sustainable foods fellow at the Center for Urban Ecology.

The Future is Bright for Food System Change

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By Nic Mink

ifcapple

Late at night, when I’m the last one left at the CUE office (heck, I’m the last one left in Gallahue Hall!), I crank music on Spotify. Loud, cheesy music. The type of music you sing along to by yourself, late at night, in the basement of an academic building, bathed in the blue hue of fluorescent bulbs and surrounded by piles of half-graded papers.

Tonight, the Five Stairsteps are in heavy rotation. They’re the group behind the funk-it-out, soul bending 1970 classic, “Ooh Child.”  Its political message is now largely lost, but its lyrics still resonate with people who recognize the tremendous opportunities that the future holds.

“Ooh child, things are gonna get easier. Ooh child, things’ll get brighter”

For food and food system change, the future is bright indeed! Citizens, entrepreneurs, policy makers, farmers, chefs—all of those people who make up the “food system”—are collaborating like never before to bring healthier food into communities and to create more just and equitable food systems. In the process, food is quickly becoming a catalyst for meaningful and lasting transformation in American society.

Look around and you’ll notice the way that people grow food and eat food is transforming, quite radically, right before our eyes. Eating locally and organically are no longer just buzzwords, but are now commonplace activities for many Americans. The number of community gardens and farms in urban areas are exploding. National policy makers are reinforcing this change through large-scale public investments. In the most recent Farm Bill, for instance, seed money for farmers’ market and local food promotion quintupled.

Locally, citizens in Indianapolis just launched the Indy Food Council, an organization that looks to build community around food and advance food system ideas and initiatives at a city-wide level. The City-County Council recently passed a Healthy Food Resolution that commits the city’s resources to building a better food system. Organizations like Growing Places Indy, Fall Creek Gardens, Indy Urban Acres, and Distelrath Farm—to name just a few—are growing both food and community here in Indianapolis.

These developments represent a groundswell and a seismic shift, but brighter, still, we must become.

Nicolaas Mink, PhD is the urban sustainable foods fellow at the Center for Urban Ecology.