Meet the Local Food Leaders

The idea of “being a Food Leader” can be a bit abstract and confusing. It is definitely different from being a Food Entrepreneur, which is a leader who takes the initiative to create something that does not currently exist in their society. Being a Food Leader is more diverse, it is something everyone can be.

How to become one? Well… You don’t have to “startup” your own food project–even though that would be really awesome! Food leaders first focus on their relationship with food, make changes as they feel needed, then share and learn with others their experience. It requires is one understand why we eat the way we do and then have the motivation to make improved food decisions everyday. Every bite, every dollar, every hour has an impact on our food system.

Now don’t get me wrong, we need entrepreneurs and change makers greatly in society. Many of them begin the dialog, ask the initial question (Why doesn’t UT have an academic program to study food?!)… But not everyone can be an entrepreneur. Great teams are full of leaders with unique and individual skill sets.

Being a Food Leader doesn’t mean you have to make all of the decisions, but you will to have to understand how you play an important role in changing the food system. So begin to ask yourself, why do I eat the way I do? Am I ok with that? Why? Why not?

These were some of the questions UT Food Studies Alumni Alejandra and I decided to ask some of the Local Food Leaders at the 2012 Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA) Conference. We wanted to understand what do “Food Leaders” do and more importantly why. So, we created a short video for you, the next generation of food leaders, to help inspire your food studies and projects. Share it with your friends, teachers, mentors, co-workers and everyone who loves food, because we can all become Food Leaders simply by beginning to use food as a lens to understand ourselves and the world around us.

Great thanks to all the Food Leaders that participated in the video and sharing their story.

Jerry Cunningham, Proprietor of Coyote Creek Organic Feed Mill
Alexandra Maria Landeros, Writer and Editor for Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
Nick Latham, Founder of My Country Co-op
Brandi Clark, President of Austin EcoNetwork
Marla Camp, Publisher of Edible Austin
Ronda Rutledge, Executive Director of the Sustainable Food Center
Michael Olson, Author of Food Chain Radio and MetroFarm.com
Patty Lovera, Assistant Director of Food & Water Watch
Dustin Fedako, CEO of East Austin Compost Peddlers
Aurora Porter, Marketing & Communications for Vital Farms
Scott Price, Consultant for Slow Money Austin and SRP Consulting
Kathryn Hutchison, Marketing for Greenling.com & VP Austin Food Blogger Alliance
Judith McGeary, Executive Director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
Pamela Walker, Author of Growing Good Things to Eat-Texas A&M
Kelsey Coto, President of Food Studies at The University of Texas at Austin
Ellen, Blogger/Educator for The Homegrown Revival
Heather Frambach, Outreach Manager for HOPE Farmers Market
Evan Driscoll, Farm Hand at Green Gate Farms
Jessie Griffiths’, Chef/Owner of Dai Due Supper Club

Special thanks to Edible Austin, Slow Food Austin, Greenling, UT Food Studies and Alejandra Spector for sponsorship and support producing this video.

Video Produced by Daniel “Asiago” Heron

Eucharist Adventure

Born and raised Catholic, I was always fascinated with the Eucharist wafers that my family and I ate every Sunday at church. My adventure started one year at summer camp when I was ten, when a priest gave me a tupperware container full of the little round chips of unleavened bread and advised me to “snack on them if you get hungry”. I remember feeling uncomfortable since I was always told to treat the little wafers as the body of Christ. Roman Catholicism teaches “transubstantiation” meaning that the bread and wine served at Catholic Mass are transformed into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ. Most other Christian identities believe that the bread and wine is a metaphorical representation of Jesus, like at my Grandma’s church where I got grape juice and crackers.

As I watched people lining up to receive the communion of flavorless wafers and sweet wine, I started to ask to myself, “How are these unleavened alter breads made? Where do they come from?” Just like so many other food writers and journalists have been doing tracking down the production of corn or the hamburger, I wanted to take a journey to learn about these wafers that Catholics eat all the time. With a little bit of Internet research, here is what I found out on my Eucharist Adventure:

Little girl, not old enough to receive yet, being bless in communion line. From: media.vcstar.com

GMOverdramatic

Its a common axiom among some people interested in food that Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are a bad idea. This sentiment ranges in intensity from those who think organic food is simply more nutritious to people who believe GMOs are destined to destroy the human race. Much like Brittany’s post about local food, I think this opinion might need a closer look. The following is by no means the whole discussion on GMOs, but hopefully it will raise some questions and lead to some good discussion.

I think the biggest reason people mistakenly demonize GMOs has nothing to do with the crops themselves, but rather the companies that produce them. The predatory nature of companies like Monsanto has been lamented by farmers and activists around them globe. Perhaps these business practices could be a topic of another post (or five or six posts!), but they really have nothing to do with the product.

It is also likely that the incredible rise in the popularity organic foods might have led some to dislike or distrust genetically engineered (GE) foods. The logic here seems valid at first glance: organic food is better, so GE food must be worse! But a closer look reveals several inconsistencies. Consider the Bt pesticide. Bt is a bacterium that has insecticidal properties but is considered safe for humans. Because Bt is naturally occurring, it can be used on organic crops without risk of losing organic certification. Not long ago, scientist discovered a way to insert genetic information from Bt into the genome of certain crops like corn and cotton. These “Bt crops” produce the same insecticide as the Bt bacterium and have been very successful since becoming available in 1996. Bt crops cannot be considered organic because of this genetic modification. So which is really better? Humans are still ingesting the Bt byproducts that have been proven safe (even the Europeans use Bt as a pesticide!), but the Bt crops do not require the additional environmental burdens of using water and burning fossil fuels that are required for pesticide application.

Student Innovation

As promised in my last post, the time has arrived for the Food Studies Project to fly. Our destination is to lay the foundations of a Food Studies Institute. In order to get started, we took a leap. It was scary, at first, because gravity is always trying to pull us back to the ground. But falling is part of learning how to fly. We, at the Food Studies Project, believe that we can defy gravity with supporting winds, leading us to great heights.

Original Logo for FSP. Created By Asiago

Since launching the Food Studies Project (FSP) in September 2011, our UT Community has really become excited to see where this project will go.  The FSP’s interdisciplinary approach to the study of food has been well received by students both from the sciences and the arts. Most have agreed that the complexity of food in modern day society warrants a multidisciplinary program that balances the interests and concerns about food.

Orientating ours minds to make our program fly requires focus not only on the technical side (administration, venture capital, faculty), but on the beauty of our project as well. A Food Studies program should focus on the behavioral and social sciences that will compliment a variety of academic fields. In other Food Studies programs across the nation, there seems to be a division between a foodie and foodist. I believe that UT should bring a variety of disciplines to the table for students to get a taste of all the aspects and understandings of food. Let’s mix both love for food and the concerns that accompany it into a program that will discuss and create new ideas. Hopefully, with the right balance, we will find our wings.