December 2013,

As this year draws to a close, I would like to take a moment to reflect on what I believe has been some of the most important learning from LFS and GRS for me personally.

For the first several weeks of LFS, we explored the idea of learning. We talked about the different learning systems and environments that we are a part of and how they impact the way in which we receive, make use of, and distribute knowledge. For most of my life growing up in the Bible Belt, I was a strict skeptic fueled by experiences with antagonistic expressions of belief from others and a love for empirical evidence. I was polarized towards one way of acquiring knowledge by the equally and ‘oppositely’ extreme views of some of the people in my life – or so I thought. As I got older and became immersed in a more diverse community I began to grasp the idea that there is no right or wrong way – there are no real opposites. Certainly methodology differs, but I now believe that the emergent benefits of considering a variety of ‘tools’ can be the most beneficial.
It was powerful to see this notion recognized in an actual classroom setting in a university (the traditional seat of science) – and not to do just that, but to spend an entire unit examining it! Through seeing this way of learning actively put into place in GRS provided some real context to the value of interdisciplinary study. GRS has actively encouraged me to reassess my traditional sources of knowledge and look to both my peers and to other cultures when learning. For example, when we talked about development we discussed the relative importance of accomplishing the scientific goals (scientific knowledge such as global warming or crop fertility) of a project as opposed to what was ultimately beneficial for the people in a given region (cultural knowledge such as community involvement and traditional practices). We were then given a variety of sources of basing this discussion on from reading scientific papers to learning from those directly involved with development to discussing it with our peers to reflecting on it and coming up with our own definition. This multifaceted approach will be something that I will remember whenever I am studying.

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December 2013,

The main focus of this blog will be to explore interactions between people and the food that they eat in urban areas. With that in mind, I would like to start off the main discussion by examining what I believe to be one of the most interesting solutions to the problems of urban food sovereignty – aquaponics. I will soon be embarking on a nearly year long exploration of the world of urban aquaponics as part of an independent study here at UBC in order to learn more about their possible applications regarding not only food sovereignty, but sustainable fish farming and local market awareness as well.
While some may see cities as intrinsically unable to be self-sustainable, I believe that this is more a result of our societal values than it is the nature of cities themselves. Rapid population growth and poor planning have led to the rapid expansion of cities on their peripheries through urban sprawl. After World War two, owning your own home was seen to be extremely desirable and with an improved highway system and low-cost mortgages from he GI. Bill, affordable housing systems such as Levittown, Pennsylvania were very popular. At that time urban decay and redlining also served as push factors as cities rapidly increased and blurred their borders. Today, many people still make the decision to move to more affordable suburbs and commute rather than paying a high price for city living. The end result is that the farms that used to line the periphery of many cities have closed shop as skyrocketing land values give aging and indebted farmers an incentive to sell their land to property developers. This once vibrant source of local food has fallen to the wayside as neoliberal trade policies opt for greater food security at the cost of sovereignty.
Consumer demand is also a large part of the equation. While times may be changing now as shoppers seek lower food miles and more trustworthy supply chains, the fact remains that people have grown accustomed to cheap food available regardless of season. This has a huge variety of negative impacts on farmers, the environment, and public health, but in regards to local food sovereignty it primarily means that the majority are unwilling to pay for the cost of having reduced economics of scale and having to grow products in non-optimal climates with vastly higher labor expenses among other cost-increasing factors. Recently, as I mentioned, there has been an upsurge in demand for local, primarily organic, food that has allowed farmers to turn economic disadvantage into added value.
Without comprehensive policy reform and a reigning in on the market for land development, it is unlikely that enough farms on the urban edge will be able to make a significant contribution to the urban food supply unless they are able to find ways to increase the profitability of their product and have a larger stake in the industry. The two ways that I believe this would be most likely to occur are dependent on crop value and market demand – in addition to the possibility that the externalities being created by the industrial food system began to impact the price of industrial food (climate change, soil fertility, energy cost, etc) and lower their market advantage. However, there are the two more optimistic approaches to consider – by identifying markets for key items farmers can hope to stay competitive. There are many local, higher cost agricultural products that are able to remain competitive due to their higher quality (due either to production practices or high spoilage rate) such as berries and summer stone fruits (peaches, plums, etc). In addition to the product quality, it can have many other marketable traits to add value such as organic certification and consumer trust.
Aquaponics is another product that I believe could be competitive in an urban setting due to what it is and how it is being produced. As global wild fish stocks decline, farmed fish will most likely come to replace them. Wild fish have traditionally been a far less complex and expensive source of product, but decreasing availability and harsher restrictions will make farming more profitable comparatively (think along the lines of the oil sands – another previously unprofitable industry). As the industry develops, I believe that farmed fish will ultimately be more preferable to processing companies as they favor uniformity and steady supply. While small-scale aquaponic production may initially seem uncompetitive due again to its lower economy of scale and higher labor costs, there are also many added value techniques that could make it very competitive. Freshness, trustworthy practices, 3rd party environmental certification, novelty, and the local label could all make it profitable enough to compete with industrial suppliers. In this way, aquaponics could contribute to urban food stability and sovereignty.

I am really looking forward to examining these and other issues regarding the growing aquaponic industry in the coming year!

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October, 2013
I would like to start off this blog by talking about a very inspiring conference that I had the opportunity to attend last weekend. I was invited to attend Whole Foods Vision Day in Seattle to discuss and learn about the long-term vision of the company as it expands throughout the PNW. While I could go on about what it’s like to work for a company that sponsors events like this or how my work will be effected by what I learned, what I would like to focus on are the guest speakers the event and how they effected me personally and how I interact with food in an urban setting.

While there were a wide range of speakers including the founder and CEO of Pacific Foods, micro-loan project leaders from Africa, and the leader of a store located in downtown Detroit that is part of the new Whole City Foundation, there was one who stood out to me in particular. Chef Ann Couper, aka The Renegade Lunch Lady, once spent her time “bumming” around ski slopes and moving from job to job to becoming an internationally renowned Chef was incredibly inspiring. Her most prominent message about this part of her life was that it does not matter where you came from or how little experience you have, as long as you are driven by something you truly believe in anything as possible. As corny as that sounds, she was not alone in this respect. Multiple speakers had founded their companies or non-profit organizations on their vision, personal drive, and, not much else. It really spoke to me regarding the impact that an individual can have on the world regardless of any seemingly insurmountable boundaries.

After becoming a respected chef, Chef Ann’s primary goal was to re-evaluate the diet of schoolchildren. After having success working with a private elementary school to redesign school meals with a greater emphasis on nutrition, she set out to fight for a paradigm shift for school lunches. As someone who grew up eating things like ‘fruit’ cups and greasy pizza in public school, I can definitely see the value in encouraging healthy eating by having a salad bar. Through her work, Chef Ann has encouraged healthy eating and granted nearly 3000 salad bars to schools across the US through information databases like The Lunchbox and the Salad Bars 2 Schools organization.

Chef Ann’s work has truly inspired me. She saw the terrible state of what is passing for food for thousands of students and decided to do something about it herself and, in doing so, contributed to a movement that will teach these thousands of students the value of healthy eating. In many ways, our society is like a city. An individual living in a city can often feel a sense of isolation and confusion – all around are complex processes and interactions that, without greater understanding, can be completely dumbfounding. In psychology, the concepts of social loafing and the bystander effect detail the notion that in large groups there is a diffusion of responsibility – the larger the group the greater the diffusion. In a city the degree of diffusion is so great that it is often forgotten all together. Most people choose to focus on their own lives and ignore their role as individuals in a community. On a nation wide scale, the diffusion is far greater – indeed it is only thanks to patriotic symbols as well as a common culture and language that individuals are able to grapple with nation-wide issues at all. The majority simply goes about their lives with an exponentially decreasing level of interaction as their lives are examined from a local perspective to a national perspective. That is why those an individual that chooses to tackle such an institutionalized issue as school meals really stands out to me. While it is true that our small daily activities can aggregate into a much larger impact on the world (think globally, act locally), it is important to remember that our society is flexible.

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