UBC LFS350 – Team 4

Hello world!

We did it! Booth Day went beautifully, data gathering also went smoothly, and our analysis of the results is helping to answer the inquiry questions of our project. You can find our website with information on exactly where to buy recovered produce, recipes and money-saving tips here!

Our executive summary is just what it sounds like: an abstract of our project’s objectives, methodology, results, and final thoughts. It is useful to have a summary that is written so that anyone can understand what the project is, and why we chose to do it:

This project is conducted as part of the Land and Food Systems (LFS) 350 – Land, Food and Community II class at the University of British Columbia. The project seeks to connect students on campus with produce retailers who are combating the issue of food waste by selling produce that does not fit aesthetic standards , yet is still perfectly edible and nutritious (recovered produce).

The objectives of this project are:

• Raising awareness of the issue of food waste both at the commercial and household levels
• Sharing money- and time-saving meal ideas made from recovered produce
• Assessing students’ willingness to include recovered produce in their diet

The inquiry questions of our project are:

• What is the level of awareness among the student population in terms of food waste?
• What are the student’s perception on recovered foods?
• Do students have food literacy skills to utilize recovered foods?

Methodology for this project includes several parts. The first part consisted of finding the number of produce retailers (accessible by transit) which sell recovered produce, as well as collecting information on what type of recovered produce is sold, where in the store it is located, and how much it is sold for.

The second part of the project’s methodology consisted of our event at the UBC Nest, where we served smoothies made from recovered smoothies, used surveys to collect data on the pre-existing student awareness of food waste, and, lastly, engaged with students directly with the purpose of educating them on the issue of food waste, while sharing recipes made from recovered produce.

Key results of our project include a moderate understanding of the issue of food waste by the students (prior to our event), as well as a relatively high number of produce retailers selling recovered produce in west and central Vancouver.

We recommend that the discussion surrounding food waste continues in full force, and encourage future LFS 350 teams to continue our project by further assessing student awareness of food waste issues, and create a network between produce retailers and all members of the UBC community interested in curbing food waste.

We also wanted to do one more What, So What and Now What analysis of a significant moment in our project development, as we found it served as a powerful learning experience.

What
Deciding on a project on which to work together was a moment of hardship within the team. This is because we all come from different backgrounds and are pursuing different programs with conflicting interests.

So What
We believed that having aligned interests  on one project would dictate the success of the overall project and of the team. We were uncertain and wary of the success we would have as a team at first, given our differing preferences. Through compromise, we eventually did use a relatively effective method of arriving at a consensus, as we thought that by approaching this issue “democratically”, we would ensure that everyone would have an equal say in the choosing of a topic (University of California, Berkeley, 2016).

Now What
Although the project given was not what the team wanted, the rating system of our top 3 preferred projects was extremely significant, as it represented an attempt by our team to address internal issues early in the project development stage. Had we not found a solution to our differing opinions – through the use of voting – we would have run into trouble later on in the progress of our project, when smooth performance and communication of the team is paramount. Therefore, this moment of significance served as a lesson for future group work: early detection of internal team problems must be addressed and solved as soon as possible.

University of California, Berkeley. (2016). Guide to Managing Human Resources: Steps to Building an Effective Team. Retrieved from http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/guides/managing-hr/interaction/team-building/steps

And with that, we have reached the end of our blog designated for this project. We truly hope future LFS 350 teams will build on our project, and create resources for education, networking and creativity surrounding the issue of tackling food waste. Food waste is something that occurs daily in our lives, though we may not be aware of it, and must, thusly, be addressed and combated.

Thanks for following our project along with us, and we hope you are able to draw some inspiration from this project (whether it’s tackling food waste, creating a similar project, blogging, eating more fruit – anything at all!).

A heartfelt thank you and goodbye!

Team 4 signing off.

Hello everyone!

What fun our Event Day was! We enjoyed engaging with students, educating them about food waste and recovered produce, as well as serving some delicious smoothies.
We also have launched our website with an interactive map, recipes and facts about food waste and recovered produce.

Here are our weekly objectives and strategies to achieve:

Our Moment of Significance workshop helped provide a visual to the progress of our project throughout the semester. It also helped us understand each other’s experiences and perspectives (e.g., emotions) of the project at the different stages during this term.

Using the graph, we can all agree our lowest points (where we felt the most anxiety) happened in week 2 and week 5. In week 2, we struggled with the creation of a project “from scratch”, as we tried to agree on a common objective, and then narrowing it down further into a tangible, realistic project that would fit within a limited time frame. In week 5, we had difficulty understanding the feedback we received on our proposal and translating this feedback into our project development plans as we initially received a lot of help and feedback from our instructors. Once we had figured that out, we were able to work through that, the project took off quickly, and our event (Booth day) was a success.

These ups and downs are consistent with the 5 stages of group development, which are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. In week 1, we had yet to get to know each other (forming), while in week 2, we had to decide on the project of choice. We actually had difficulty choosing one we were all happy with (storming stage), but as, ironically, we were given a project neither of us actually opted for, we at last had something common. Working through the proposal together, as well as finalizing the details of our project, we experienced the norming stage. Booth Day, the final report and presentation represent the performing stage, where our objective, roles (of each team member) and expectations are fulfilled, while the adjourning stage will take place as the course comes to an end, and we all separate to our own plans for the summer.

One week prior to the event, we had created a Facebook Events page to promote the event, and introduced the topics “recovered foods” and “food waste”. The Events page generated the attention of approximately fifteen hundred students. To ensure the event would be well organized, careful planning was made for the logistics of the event day. Logistic planning included of: who would be in charge of collecting the recovered produce, food preparation, set up an additional blog (for students to refer to after the event), bringing all the required booth items. On the day of the actual event, we assigned roles among the team members, with those Food-Safe certified handling the food and nothing else. The other team members engaged with the students, speaking about food waste and recovered produce, as well as distributed and gathered the surveys. The event overall was a huge success as many students from a variety of faculties came to our booth. Surprisingly enough, many were not aware of the food waste in our city and the recovered foods program established at some local produce markets. The students were receptive in trying recovered foods, learning more about food waste and inexpensive ways to eating healthier. This was a fulfilling goal accomplished as our group members were able to engage in meaningful dialogue with the students and provide them resources such as our blog to direct them to places they could obtain recovered foods within metro Vancouver.

In order for the project to be completed successfully, we will have to ensure that we continuously relate our objectives and inquiry questions to our final paper, as this project is in large part research-based. This means that we will have to organize the survey data in a way that is comprehensible and can be analysed. As well, it is paramount that the results are expressed in a manner that can be easily understood by the general public (ex. graphs, word clouds), while the Final Report presents the data in a detailed, scientific manner.

Although we have a Flexible Learning session as well as a holiday (Easter Monday) before the end of the school term, we will communicate online often as well as meet outside of class to ensure that everyone’s input towards the project is heard, and the finalization of the project is performed efficiently. The finalization of the report and presentation must not be completed at the last minute!

With these plans in mind, we are sure on our way to make this project a pretty darn good one! The next post will be our last, and we hope that it will reflect the success of our project.

Until then!
Team numero 4 🙂

Hello readers!

We now have a proposal for our group project! If you’re interested in learning more about our objectives, research questions, etc., please click on the link below to read our proposal.

LFS 350 – Group 4 Proposal Report

Can you believe that six weeks of classes have passed us by? Me neither. Before we continue with our strategies for the future weeks, let us look back at our weekly objectives and achievements in the previous weeks!

One moment of significance that has occurred in the course so far is when we, as a group, decided on doing the recovered smoothie project (i.e. making smoothies using recovered produce). According to Rolfe et al. (2001), reflection upon a certain action or idea can be done by asking ourselves three questions: “What?”, “So what?” and “Now what?”. When answered in order, the three questions chronologically helps us reflect on what the underlying issue is (or was), why is the issue significant and based on our knowledge, how can we come about addressing it. “Now what” ultimately helps us navigate how we can make better improvements in the future based on what we have learned.

What?

Our primary concern looked at issues on food waste as it is both an economic and environmental problem tying into sustainability. Our very first idea for a food waste project was to work on utilizing used ground coffee beans for small scale agricultural use (i.e. household spices garden, soil for a pot plant) assessing whether connecting businesses with small scale farmers would mitigate food waste (i.e., coffee beans) and costs. However, after further discussion among fellow team members, along with Will’s input, we agreed that the ground coffee beans project was not very feasible. Human interaction (i.e. potentially required house visitations) became one of our biggest concerns, as we feared that we might not be able to visit as much residential areas as we could within the time constraint of the project.

So what?

The entire brainstorming process taught us that we had to think smaller as our initial idea may be too big of a project to take on. We had to be flexible on changing our preconceived notions about what may or may not work in a project. We believed that the ground coffee bean project could be accomplished, until Will suggested that we could be facing difficulties achieving some of our project goals (i.e. complete house visitations) due to time constraints. In addition, we were exposed to a broader perspective that is needed during inception of ideas, which includes more thorough considerations of interaction with stakeholders, stricter adherence to time constraints and possible communication with a bureaucratic body (i.e. City of Vancouver, AMS Student Society).

Now what?

We ultimately agreed on a different project that is still based on food waste – The Recovered Smoothie Project. In the future, project planning should be strategically done in ways that constantly assess the project’s feasibility and possibility to achieve success. Specific factors, such as time constraints and bureaucratic interaction, may be the biggest hurdle in accomplishing a project, which is why minimizing or finding an alternative to managing these factors could be worthwhile. For instance, instead of trying to extend the project’s time span, it may be better to narrow the focus of the project into a more achievable scope.

Additionally, it may be wise to perform a project pre-mortem before we move forward with more deliberate project planning. A project pre-mortem is helpful in early identification of potential failures, which can help groups plan their projects more wisely in order to avoid eventual incompletion (Klein, 2007). As reflected in the text, a pre-mortem would also help us ensure all team members are on the same page and know what to expect from themselves and others throughout the project.

And now, these are our objectives for the next three weeks, and how we are planning on achieving our goals.

While the above-mentioned objectives seem feasible, some obstacles that would prevent them from being achieved include:

• being unable to find enough grocery stores selling discounted produce by the time the website is launched (Booth Day)
• being unable to find enough recovered produce to create large quantities of smoothies for our Booth Day activity
• being unable to gather accurate data from students via surveys, as they would be more interested in accepting a free smoothies than providing us with thoughtful responses to the survey

With these challenges in mind, we are certain to be giving this project our best efforts in making it successful. As with any data-gathering project, statistical errors must be minimized as little as possible in order to provide a clear description of the sample population we have interacted with.

We’re quite excited with how fun Booth Day promises to be, and we hope that we will be able to convey our message efficiently by handing out smoothies made out of recovered produce and explaining to students the importance of reducing food waste.

Until next post,

Team 4

References:

Klein, G. (September, 2007). Performing a project premortem. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2007/09/performing-a-project-premortem

“Up to one third of all food is spoiled or squandered before it is consumed by people. It is an excess in an age where almost a billion people go hungry, and represents a waste of the labour, water, energy, land and other inputs that went into producing that food.”

UN FAO, 2016

Hello, there! We are team no.4 in the LFS 350 2016 winter/spring course, and our project is one we have designed ourselves, with the much-appreciated help of our mentors, Adrienne and Will. Our project seeks to tackle the issue of food waste on a local scale, making an impact within our campus and nearby communities. This endeavour, added to the similar projects worldwide, can help bring attention and solutions to the issue of food security.

Below are the team members and their respective goals for this course:

• Evonne, a student in Food,  Nutrition and Health and recently having applied to Global Resource Systems to specialize in Global Nutrition and Health. She is passionate about food nutrition and its importance to food security. Her future career goals will involve a global perspective investigating how various food systems impact different societies and how to address these food system issues in a sustainable manner. She hopes to gain from this course the ability to collaborate with multiple disciplines and appreciate the challenges working and researching with others along with gaining more knowledge and understanding of our current food system. She can apply this to her future career where she would have gained teamwork skills applicable in an international setting, addressing food system issues through research and field work.
  

• Heather, a 3rd-yr student majoring in Nutritional Sciences. She enjoys learning about ways to deal with food security issues surrounding different demographics around the community. Since the midwifery program at UBC might be a degree she considers after FNH, she is planning to use her background in nutrition and food accessibility to supplement her studies on prenatal women, on both the local and international scale. Through this course, she hopes to have an increased understanding of how to incorporate different perspectives and needs when developing future community projects. As well, she hopes that the skills she gains through LFS 350 will complement her studies by having a better approach for community research.
  

• Belda, a 3rd year student in the Food Science major. She loves food and science, and wishes to use herknowledge in these areas to help as many people as she can. Her current personal goal, which she hopes to can pursue professionally, is to figure out how knowledge of food science can be utilized towards improving global food security, solving wide nutritional problems (i.e. malnutrition in children, lack of food security due to poverty) and to create more sustainable food production methods. Through this course, she hopes to improve her project management skills, as well as deepen her knowledge in asset-based community development. Belda believes her experience from LFS350 will help her plan better projects in future careers.

• Jing, a 4th year student in the Food Nutrition major. He is interested in topics on supplementation. His goal is to improve nutrition and health outcomes of the populations through availability of foods that would increase intake of vegetables and fruits, decrease caloric intake and increase micronutrient intake. He hopes to help shift consumer behaviour towards an increased consumption of a diversified diet of vegetables and fruits, considering the current issues of obesity and health related diseases. Through the LFS 350 course he hopes to integrate personal, group, and community values by addressing the issue of food security on a community scale.
  

• Ana, a 3rd-yr student in Global Resource Systems. Her specialization is sustainable agriculture (economic and sociological perspectives, in addition to scientific), in Latin America. She is interested in food production methods that promote self-sustenance and a successful means of living for  small-scale farmers in developing nations, and in regions where food security is an issue. She is also particularly interested in urban agriculture, and projects relating to growing food in small, limited spaces. She hopes this course will help her understand how to create and integrate small-scale solutions which can help the big picture.
  

Collective goals and interests behind taking LFS 350 this winter/spring:

1. Develop skills of professional collaboration with different community members and stakeholders, within different settings and situations.
2. Gain skills in analyzing, assessing, and implementing initiatives that positively impact the community and meet their needs, while restraining from assuming a “superior” and pedantic position over these community members.
3. Gain more appreciation and understanding of the challenges and complexities in addressing these issues in terms of collaborating, communicating, and executing these initiatives.
4. Further develop time management skills.

Our project and its goals align with the Vancouver Food Strategy, which is the City’s new initiative to meet their social, environmental, economic, and health goals. Through years of gathering, sharing and initiatives, the drive to focus on food security and sustainability on a community scale is stronger than ever. From urban farming to food accessibility to composting, grassroots and community-initiated projects have created a strong base and network on which food security can be addressed. More information can be found here. Within the 5 priority action areas of the Vancouver Food Strategy, our project seeks to tackle the issue of food waste. Predominantly, we wish to gather, analyze and present data on the level of food waste occurring at several small grocery stores and markets, as well as create resources from which community members can lessen their level of food waste. Furthermore, our vision for this project is to bring awareness to students regarding the amount of fresh produce thrown away, even in a household. By providing ideas and options on how to use these produce items, students will be encouraged to use fruits and vegetables they already have in their fridge and pantry, thus decreasing food waste at home.

A brief description of our methodology:

• Connect with grocery stores and markets management and gather data on how they dispose of, or, deal with unsold produce (Sprouts, grocery store at the Nest, Kin’s Market, several other grocery stores within a 15km-radius of the UBC campus).
  
• Create healthy, delicious recipes that utilize “ugly”, unsold produce, keeping costs as low as possible. Set up a booth on campus, offering our culinary creations to students, and gathering feedback on the palatability of these recipes. Surprise students with the fact that the smoothies are made from “unappealing” produce, are inexpensive to make, and yet are very nutritious.
• Set up a website or another form of medium that would be easily accessible for community members and campus students, providing these recipes, information on food waste, as well as a map indicating the grocery stores and markets which sell discounted produce.

First impressions of our project so far:

We had difficulty coming up with a project which we could realistically envision completing in the short time-frame we are given (about 3 months). However, by starting big (“let’s do something about food waste”) and narrowing it down (“focus on awareness and the student body”), and narrowing it down some more (“help them find grocery stores which sell discounted produce and even show them how yummy and inexpensive meals can be”), we were able to create a feasible and exciting project to take on.

We are hoping this project will have a lasting impact on the student and local community. By bringing awareness to the students and having resources available, we will inspire lifestyle changes that can encourage students understand the importance of food waste at both the household and commercial levels,  help them turn “old” produce into nutritious meals, and support local businesses. Ideally, this project could be the first step of an initiative that would be continued by following groups interested in the issue of food waste in subsequent LFS 350 classes.

Two approaches we are adamant on following, which will make our project more difficult to carry through, but at the same time will make it less superficial and more successful in the long-term are: 1) listening to the community and 2) using an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach.

It is important that we are open and understanding of what students want, as well as what these small businesses need, and why they are dealing with food waste the way they currently are. How much time is a student willing to put in to look for unsold produce? What if they are looking for specific ingredients? What if they simply don’t have time to clean, cut up and blend or cook food? Is it time-efficient and economically viable for businesses to categorize old produce, price it and use retail space to sell it? Are there any health regulations keeping them from selling old produce? Does the display of unpalatable produce affect the shop’s/market’s image? We are trying to approach this project by gathering this much-needed information, rather than straight-up offering a “solution”, a perspective speaker Ernesto Sirolli strongly emphasizes. What better way to successfully learn than through listening?

Also, by focusing on what is already working for students and for grocery stores and markets, we can create ideas that would further add to the success of the businesses or the lifestyle of the student(the premise of ABCD). If the grocery store more of a farmers’ market-style retailer, then displaying reduced produce would further enhance the atmosphere of farm-grown produce stands. If students like simplicity and quick recipes, then we can focus on minimal ingredients and quick recipes . And so on. The solutions differ, and they are unique to each situation.

References:

City of Vancouver. (June 22, 2015). Vancouver Food Strategy: Building just and sustainable food systems. City of Vancouver: People and Programs. Retrieved from http://vancouver.ca/people-programs/vancouvers-food-strategy.aspx

Collins, Carla. (October 16, 2014). ABCD Animation. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_muFMCLebZ4

FAO. (2016) Food Loss and Food Waste. FAO. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/en/

Sirolli, Ernesto. (November 26, 2012). Want to help someone? Shut up and listen! Ted Talks. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chXsLtHqfdM