Grow Local, Eat Local
What sense does it make when fresh strawberries grown in Pennsylvania are trucked westward to grace San Francisco fruit salads while California strawberries are shipped eastward to garnish New York desserts? Join us as we hop aboard the movement to buy and eat locally produced food, boosting the fortunes of local farmers and reducing our carbon footprints in the process.
Click on a program topic to hear audio with voices and stories behind the issues.
Use the study guides to inform yourself about the topic and learn the skills of innovation, including:
- Creative problem-solving
- Strategic thinking
- Entrepreneurial initiative
- Collaborative design
In addition:
- Explore other audio, video and print resources on the topic
- Use the suggested activities to put innovation into action in your community
- Choose from a menu of options to adapt the materials to your specific learning and teaching objectives.
Patty Cantrell
Entrepreneurial Agricultural Director for the Michigan Land Use Institute (4:06)
Anthony Flaccavento and Mark Sommer
Creator Appalachian Sustainable Development, a hands-on, entrepreneurial nonprofit working to build a locally rooted, ecologically sustainable food system and economy in this region. (2:15)
Grow Local, Eat Local: Feeding Our Hunger for Connection
Study and Resource Guide
Community Outcomes and Learning Goals
· Explore the movement to re-localize food production and consumption in terms of personal and public health, economic impact, community vitality, and social responsibility/implications.
· Raise awareness of personal food choices and both the benefits and deficiencies of current mass market food production.
· Gain awareness of the challenges facing small farmers competing with agribusiness operations to gain a share of the consumer’s food budget.
· Achieve an understanding of organic and sustainable agriculture, including the health benefits for consumers, economic benefits for farmers, and health of agricultural soils and systems. Weigh the challenges and limitations they face.
· Consider our individual and collective role(s) in the industrialized food system and how our purchasing power and food choices influence this system.
· Teach innovation skills to devise new and more effective approaches to these issues through creative problem solving, collaborative design, entrepreneurial initiative and strategic thinking.
Listening/ Comprehension Questions
Before Listening
1. Are you aware of where your food comes from? Consider the last thing you ate. How far from your plate did its ingredients originate? Does it matter where it came from? Does it matter how far away? Why/why not?
During/After Listening
1. Jessica Prentiss says that her food activism came out of a desire to “put food back into the context of a relationship.” What does she mean by “relationship”?
2. Given the lower apparent costs of transporting locally produced food from farm to market, why is it generally more expensive to buy than food grown thousands of miles away?
3. Why is a local food movement emerging at this time? What are the stated motivations and priorities of those who advocate re-localizing food production and consumption?
4. What experiment did Alisa Smith and her husband undertake? How did it go? Would you want to try their experiment? If not, why not?
5. According to Anthony Flaccavento, why are many tobacco farmers now switching to different crops? Which crops are they trying instead?
Critical Thinking Questions
1. Jessica Prentice, Diana Endicott, and Patti Cantrell all suggest that what people really hunger for as much as the food itself is an emotional connection, and that this can be achieved through shopping in local farmers’ markets and preparing and eating food together. What do you think? Do you prefer cooking and eating together or alone?
2. Mark Sommer asks if a renewed emphasis on growing local could inadvertently hurt small farmers in the developing world who depend on exports for their survival. What’s the proper balance between eating locally produced food and supporting small farmers in distant places?
3. Consider the experiment Alisa Smith and her husband took on in eating only foods grown in their own region for a full year. After listening to their account, what advantages and disadvantages can you see to this approach? What foods that can’t be grown in your locale would you miss most?
4. Mark Sommer raises a valuable point when he states “local…is important…organic is…important….and affordability is important”. Is it possible to fulfill all three? Can we truly have our cake and eat it too? In your view, what is the proper balance? Under what circumstances would you be willing to reduce one value to fulfill the others?
5. Jessica Prentice asserts that despite rising prices, by historical standards food in our country remains extremely cheap in relation to income. How do current food prices feel to you when you shop? When do food prices cause you to buy something different from what you originally intended?
6. Jessica Prentice goes on to state that people should be willing to pay more for higher quality food. Do you agree with her on this point? If not, why not? If you had to choose, which would you sacrifice first – organic veggies or that car trip you were planning? If you like to eat organic, at what price difference, if any, would you choose conventional over organic produce?
Experiential Learning
1. How Local Can You Go? Alisa Smith and her husband ate entirely locally for one year. Try eating food only from your own region for just one day or one week. Journal your experience – what you ate, what you avoided, and what you found yourself craving. Share and compare it with what others ate during the same period. What did you enjoy most? What did you miss most?
2. Cornucopia: Research the historical relationship people have had with specific “totem” foods in a particular culture – for instance, corn in Central and Latin America, rice in Asia, potatoes in the Andes, acorns for traditional Native Americans. What was/is the nature of the relationship between these people and their staple foods? Write a paper or make a verbal presentation contrasting their relationship with their totem foods and your relationship with your own favorite foods.
3. Food Love: Create a painting/sketch/collage/poem/etc that represents your personal relationship with food.
4. Your Own Full Moon Harvest: With a small group or on your own, research, plan, and create a meal entirely of locally produced food options. Host a lunch or dinner party with locally produced food as its theme and ask everyone to bring a local food to share. Prepare the lunch and eat it together.
Crossing the Line Activity
Lesson Objectives:
· Explore issues of access, health, and community as they are related to global and local food production in the United States.
· Develop critical thinking and problem solving skills through an inquiry based process
Materials Needed:
· Educast/Food, Sustainability and Society: Grow Local, Eat Local: Feeding Our Hunger For Connection
· Student Worksheets
· One to two class periods
Procedure
- Ask students to listen to the Educast: Grow Local, Eat Local, paying particular attention to the concepts of access to food (both geographic and economic), health and nutrition, and community as they listen. They may take as many notes as they would like during the Educast, as key points may aid them during this exercise.
- Divide the room/seating into two halves, facing one another. On one side of the room, place a sign that is labeled “TRUE” and on the other, a sign labeled “FALSE”. Instructors may even use a piece of thick tape/duct tape to create a visual “line” down the middle of the room.
- Provide students with accompanying worksheet of true/false statements and ask them to decide individually whether each statement is true or false, making notes as they like.
- Introduce the first statement and ask those who found it to be “true” to sit on the side of the room labeled “true” and vice versa.
- Students may then take turns defending their stance. During the process, should any one student become convinced that a point made by the other side is, in fact, the better point, they may move seats, or defect. Where students are positioned near or far from the line can indicate how strong their belief/conviction is concerning the statement. As students from “the other side” talk, those across the line may move closer or further away from the center line, denoting how their perspectives are shifting, if in fact they are.
- Facilitate this discussion, using your time allowance for each question as appropriate.
- After the debate, ask students to reflect (reflection worksheet provided) on the issue and their thoughts during the debate. Debrief with the group as a whole: What additional questions were raised? What issues were most important to you during this exercise? What issues need further consideration? What solutions, if any, can you see as a result of this discussion?
TRUE/FALSE: For each of the statements below, decide whether you feel it is “true” or “false”. You may make notes to support your claim, but you must decide one or the other – there is no gray area during this debate.
1. Where our food comes from matters.
2. Emotional connection and community can be achieved through the local food movement.
3. Eating locally grown food is more sustainable and better for the environment.
4. Eating locally grown food should be our goal.
5. Eating locally grown food is more expensive.
6. The global food system should not be abandoned in favor of a local
food system.
7. It is possible to have local organic food that is affordable and accessible.
8. People should be willing to pay more for higher quality food. We pay too little for our groceries.
9. Eating locally limits nutritional options.
10. Eating locally hurts farmers in other states and other countries.
11. A national and global food system is much more efficient and provides more food for everyone through trade.
12. People should have more of a relationship with what they eat. Eating is not just about food.
13. The government should do more to encourage farmers to grow organic produce, small-scale food production and local/regional distribution]
About the Series: Educasting is a service of the Mainstream Media Project that extends the life and reach of MMP’s internationally syndicated radio program, A World of Possibilities (www.aworldofpossibilities.com) by re-purposing selected series following their initial broadcast for use as long-term audio educational and movement-building resources.
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