Week 6 objectives and achievements:
Objectives
- Conduct interviews with local food market owners and managers in Richmond
- Collect data and information from the interviews with the locally-owned food markets.
- Organize and summarize data such that it is ready to be entered into the online database.
Achievements
- Visited eight food markets in Richmond, seven which were locally-owned (one did not disclose this information) and recorded appropriate data as outlined in our project report
- Received permission from two of the owners to add their businesses to the database (completed consent form)
Upcoming objectives and strategies to achieve them:
- Return to locally-owned grocery stores next Wednesday (Oct. 21st) that requested to be met at a future time
Strategy: Visit at a convenient time for the owners, in accordance to the store employee recommendations.
- Development of database
Strategy: After the completion of our follow-up visits to the remaining food markets we will have completed our interviews with local owners. We will then organize our collected data and publish the locations of the identified locally owned food markets onto a database we will create using an online blog platform. With the initiation of this database, we hope it may be used as a tool to foster connections between food market owners, local food producers, and consumers. Furthermore, we plan on using this database as an asset to initiate contact with the City of Vancouver and City of Richmond. We hope our efforts will demonstrate interest in locally-owned food markets and will encourage further promotion and development by other community stakeholders.
- Contact farmers with the intention of conducting future interviews to learn about their perspectives and values on local food retail. Email the farmers the questions we have for them (for example their opinions and thoughts towards locally owned markets and their interest in conducting business).
Strategy: Start immediately after the database has been made active. This way, we can provide the database as a resource for farm owners, if they express interest, to connect with local food markets.
- Analyze the data we have collected as a group and compare the results with the literary research we have conducted.
Strategy: Compare the number of locally-owned produce markets to the total number we visited as well as compare owners’ answers to our interview questions. This allows us to analyze the interest that stakeholders have regarding the importance of locally-owned food markets. The sample of interviews of local food market owners can illustrate relationships between local stakeholders (producers, retailers, and consumers) that we can analyze in relation to our preliminary research.
Reflection on a moment of significance that occurred in the course:
What?
A true moment of significance was presented to our group during an in-depth interview with an owner of a successful local food market. As students of LFS 350, we are privileged to be surrounded with many like-minded individuals who we are able to access and engage in meaningful conversation with. However, a limitation of these conversations is that they largely occur between individuals or groups who share a similar background and education experience. The saying “You’re preaching to the choir” is a good representation of the significance of the point here. We have noticed that many LFS discussions often end in agreement or consensus, which one may expect when discussions only involve university students from one faculty. As pointed out in previously during discussion in class, researcher focused projects often result in failure as a fault of not considering local values and assets.
During our interviews, we became exposed to people of different upbringings, values, and personalities. One particular interview stood out to us – from a well-educated store owner who showed little priority for community independence and local stewardship in comparison to his concern for financial success. For instance, his only desire to form connections with local farms was that they could offer cheaper prices for their produce during the summer months. When we inquired about the importance on supporting local businesses to keep your dollar within the community, he dismissed this idea simply to state that his customers do not care about that – they only care about cheap prices. Further, he imposed his disappointment in the education system on us, as he found it amusing that organizers of our class believed that students can “take on the world” and actually make a positive difference, when a man such as him has been at the mercy of the consumer dollar for twenty years. When we expressed concern for the lack of sustainability of the current food system, he argued that the current food system has allowed greater customer happiness and utility at a lower price, and until that becomes an issue, nothing will be done about it.
Our experience interviewing him has signified the importance to engage all stakeholders because our actions, as both students and people who may one day find ourselves in a decision-making position, can contribute to a more just, sustainable food system. Meanwhile, it is crucial for us to compare our definition of “just” and “sustainable” to everyone else’s.
It is important to keep in mind that it is unethical to assert our values onto others. Variation in values and opinions can stimulate new ideas within the community and possibly form new solutions. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion and the individual inputs can spark new initiative. We can learn from the diversity of the community and tailor our project to assist working toward the same goals, as it adds new opportunities and challenges to completing our project.
So what?
The theme of the “Fish bank” podcast illustrates the process of a community-based project that, although starting from a lack of knowledge and infrastructure to tackle the existing issues in the community, led to successful execution and outcomes. Jensi Sartin proposed the idea of creating a fish bank, which instilled a positive response of leadership within a rural fishing village in Indonesia to restore the fish population in their fishing ground.
Engaging members within a food system is an initial step in addressing the issues at hand. Sartin’s vision is similar to ours, as we too are trying to take initiative in the community; we hope to promote sustainable food production, not only environmentally, but also for the socio-economical benefit of the food producers. There exists a parallelism in which both our group and Sartin identified a problem, had an idea, but lacked knowledge of how to execute the procedures in order to reach the goal successfully.
In Sartin’s case, most of the team members had a very rudimentary level of education, which suggested that creating a fish bank could be a challenging task. Similarly, our group faced a challenge when considering our lack of experience conducting research and applying academic knowledge outside of the classroom. Therefore, we went through frustrating moments trying to tackle the task diplomatically and efficiently. Sartin decided to deliver practical skills to the villagers, such as scuba diving, which enabled the team members to accomplish the tasks collectively. Similarly, we used some of our basic skills in order to initiate the execution of our project. We decided to ask the stakeholders in question for our project, food market owners, their opinions and values concerning locally-owned businesses.
Some of the interviewed individuals seemed more concerned about the marketability of the produce, rather than supporting the local economy or minimizing environmental impacts within a food system as we had anticipated. This demonstrates that local can be utilized as a marketable term and that profit is often prioritized above other factors. However, in Sartin’s case, he was talking to a food producer, who was directly impacted by the lack of quality in fish, which caused him to struggle for a living. It would make sense that the stakeholders in those sectors may show much stronger enthusiasm and drive for creating a more socio-economically just community through local food production. With this in mind, we could explore the possibility of becoming connected with some local food producers on what their opinions are on locally-owned food businesses as well as store owners.
The variation in opinions concerning key values of local food market ownership that we witnessed in our interviews this week allowed us to acknowledge aspects of our project that could use improvement. There is a need for more comprehensive research and thoughtfulness when considering the execution of our project, particularly when conducting research in the community. Although we are aware of the significance of an independent local food economy, and are confident in delivering our perspectives, we have neglected some aspects of the problem to make ourselves convincing . This is similar to the problem in “Grandma Mahembe’s garden” that Lindiwe Majele Sibanda encountered. While Majele Sibanda was enthusiastic in articulating her point in public and finding the solution to increase the productivity of the local African food system, she neglected the fact that she, as a representative of her country, was suffering from obesity. For this reason, her speech failed to convey her point due to the contradictory image between her and the underdeveloped African agriculture she described.
Looking back to our project, we undermined the relevance of the profit-driven aspect of the local market. Learning from this experience, we should improve our strategy when contacting the local food producers next week. It would be a good idea to have some basic knowledge about the perspectives of the local farmers before sending out the email. To avoid low response from farmers, it may be necessary to consult previous interviews or farmers’ websites to gain a general idea of their existing knowledge surrounding local food economy.
Now what?
We can improve our research techniques to carry out our project successfully by recognizing themes from “The Pragmatic Idealistic” podcast. Sisonke Msimang emphasizes how empathy can relate to discovering different perspectives on a subject. With the implementation of empathy in our project, we can relate and understand the values and opinions of the members in the community. Msimang describes how she understood the societal conflicts that the community of HIV patients faced at the beginning of her career. However, she neglected the importance of empathizing and immersing herself into their perspectives. Similarly, we ought to critically reflect on the differences in opinions that each individual may have. We now understand that many locally-owned stores are primarily profit-driven, which is contrary to the goal of promoting socially and environmentally friendly local food networks.
It is our task to empathize and search for the different possibilities to find compromise among the opinions between food market owners and producers. In addition, we need to consider how our knowledge can relate to their opinions in order to promote a just, sustainable food system in our community-based project. Msimang states, “If I want to make an impact, I need to listen to the words. Not just the words, more importantly, the silence.” Similarly, if we want to contribute a tangible impact to the community, we need to deeply reflect and comprehend the context behind the words of the stakeholders. Often, the intention and desire of one’s true viewpoint is hidden in between words. Considering this, we need to carefully analyze the interviews we have conducted in order to be successful at our project. Our project should clearly represent the values and opinions of local food market owners and producers.
Works Cited
Msimang, S. (2014). A Pragmatic Idealist [Recorded by The Moth]. Retrieved from http://themoth.org/posts/stories/a-pragmatic-idealist
Sartin, J. (2014). Fish Bank [Recorded by The Moth]. Retrieved from http://themoth.org/posts/stories/the-fish-bank
Sibanda, L. M. (2014). Grandma Mahembe’s Farm [Recorded by The Moth]. Retrieved from http://themoth.org/posts/stories/grandma-mahembes-farm