Reflecting on Farmers, Floods, and Food Systems
By now, I've had several weeks to digest the TED-style talks from the UVM Food Systems Summit on June 27. The last speaker, Sandor Katz, may have summed the day up well when he said, "Food is more than the sum of the nutrients contained in the food. It's about relationships: with micro-organisms, plants, animals, neighbors, farmers."
As we approach the August anniversary of the tremendous flooding in the Intervale 2 years ago that completely finished the growing season months early and had volunteers carrying out what produce they could amid rapidly advancing flood waters, I am reminded, potently, of how we are all in this together.
Postcard "thank you" from Digger's Mirth for helping to carry out crops during the August 2011 flooding
Sadly, May and June were the wettest two consecutive months on record again this year, with flooding once again affecting many farms and wiping out vegetable fields and pasture. At a Crop Mob we sponsored in early July, we took pictures once again of flooded fields:
Flooded squash field at Pitchfork Farm in the Intervale during the spring 2013 flooding
Still, many of our local farms are displaying amazing resilience, and with the weather drying out for now, I feel a sense of gratitude when I see the familiar farm names in our Produce department. I know that my kids will soon be picking berries and apples and that it will be all I can do to keep them from devouring the fresh, local fruit.
I'm reminded of last summer, when my kids and I helped out an an onion harvest at Intervale Community Farm: They emerged covered in dirt and ready to sink their teeth into whole, raw onions. As a mother, trying to keep your kids FROM eating onions is not a familiar situation, but one for which I am grateful. They are part of a generation that once again knows where their food comes from, and will be ready to heed the call to action as our food system continues to display signs of vulnerability in rapidly changing weather patterns.
That's what being connected to the web of relationships in our food system means to me. As one of the other speakers, Tanya Fields, an activist from the Bronx said: "Make sure the women in your community are invested in their food: financially, emotionally, and spiritually." She could just as well have said EVERYONE. The idea is, we will feed ourselves the best and demand the best from our food system when we care not just about what we put into our bodies, but how it got to our fork.
Here are some of the other gems from the day:
"If you believe giving kids chocolate milk is the way for them to get milk, then you should also feed them pie if they don't like fruit."
"We need to teach our children the life skill of cooking. There are kids growing up who are 3 generations removed from home cooking."
-Yoni Freedhof, Weighty Matters, on how to fight back against junk food marketing to children
"We need to distinguish food sovereignty from food security. Food security is the ability to GET food. Food sovereignty is the ability to CONTROL food."
-Tanya Fields, BLK ProjeK, on the South Bronx project to get a mobile farmer's market going
"Everyone here today should put 'co-designer of a better food system' on their resumes."
-Gary Nabhan, author, on the "foodyssey" we're on to save our food sheds for land health, human health, and economic well-being of our communities
"Where did this phrase 'food desert' come from? People of color don't use it. Don't tell us we live in food deserts."
-Karen Washington, urban farmer from the Bronx and board member of the Just Food project, on the vibrant mom-and-pop restaurants that characterized her upbringing in the Bronx, and empowering locals with the tools and resources they need to create more food justice in their communities
"There would be no agriculture without fermentation."
-Sandor Katz, Wild Fermentation, on how food becomes more stable, delicious, and digestible through the transformative action of fermentation
Dylan Zeitlin delivering rescued watermelons to City Market during the Intervale flood of August 2011