think and eat green at school

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The Think&EatGreen@School Project (T&EG@SP), is one of the most important programs we can support in healing a broken food system. LFS has left me optimistic about the future of food in Vancouver because it focuses on the promotion of organizations, programs and people in our community propelling a collective utopia for the future of our food. T&EG@SP is particularly crucial, as it repairs the lack of connection children have to their food, can lead to grave implications later on in life.

 

The passion and excitement the children have towards cooking and food makes the results of T&EG@SP promising; offering them positive activities surrounding topics such as growing food, eating healthy food, food citizenship, composting and land stewardship at this age undoubtedly has the potential to change who they become as adults. Most of the children in the T&EG@SP are within at quite formative ages, learning healthy behaviors now is extremely important, it is exciting to be a part of that!

My whole life I have been passionate about nutrition and I always thought that was the industry in which I would end up working. Now I am seeing, that although being a nutritionist is a noble profession, (my degree is in global nutrition), it can in some ways just be another ‘band-Aid solution’. People know what they are meant to be eating; but the bigger issue is: do they have access to it? Our government and the industrial food system are partly to blame for making the cost of non-food cheaper than real food. I am more attracted to growing my own food and helping others do the same rather than teaching them to read labels for the rest of their lives. The most effective way for our society to prevent diet related disease is to reconnect people to their food system. T&EG@S is on the right track!

 

love for The Ubc Farm

From my last experience at the UBC Farm, not only did i learn that it has; over 250 multicrop vegetable varieties, hoop-houses, organic practices, CSAs, grows truffles, restaurant sales, chickens, and numerous other physical characteristics but that it has the emergent property of a healing space.

I realized this at a couple stops during the farm tour. The first was at the Mayan garden. I was really touched by the words of Eduardo Jovel. He spoke to my heart with the way he described the accomplishments of that space on the farm. I have a very deep compassion and appreciation for the indigenous populations of the world and their intimate relationship with the plants and animals of their land. It is inspiring to see that the UBC farm has given the Mayan people a space to call their own and in creating an opportunity for them to reconnect with the land. After being presented concepts on cyber versus physical space in Barry Wellmans reading I was excited to hear Eduardo add on a third and to me the most important space; the sacred/spiritual space.

The second realization I had about the healing space of the farm was at vancouver native health society garden project.  I was truly inspired to hear of the amazing programs that run in support of the First Nations’ community. Their efforts to create opportunities for those among the most marginalized of our city were impressive.   Beyond the healing plants that are being grown in this garden, I see a deeper, much needed, healing of indigenous tradition which has been under fire for the last few hundred years. The collaboration in this space between the elders, engineers when building the smokehouse was symbolic of this.

This learning / insight matters because there is an indescribable synergy occurring on the farm. We cannot break down the farm into its separate parts as they come together to form complex systemic levels of interaction where food is only one outcome.
This visit to the fam has giving me more of a holistic understanding of the impact the farm truly has on our community. This spans far beyond the University level of interaction as it is inclusive of a greater community; the farm is the intersecting space.  It allows access to people generally excluded from the community of UBC; allowing food as the grand connector of people of all kinds.

In light of this learning I have seen a clear example of a complex system and this gives me a whole new level of respect for the farm. It is the ultimate intersecting space of all communities and peoples and this offers a profound spiritual and sacred space for all who are a part of it, whether they realize it or not. 😉