Food is just about everywhere. Or should I say “food” is just about everywhere? Healthy, authentic food is hard to come by now. Due to mass industrialization and production of food and/or food products, the definition of food has been loosely thrown around. Small-scale, independent farming eventually became large-scale farming to provide for the general public.
In the beginning, we collectively planned to reach out to local organizations to speak at a planned event. However, the organizations were either non-responsive or unwilling to cooperate. After a couple more project changes, we decided to do a blog post with the audio and video of the two interviews we conducted. We interviewed Elizabeth Wheat and Anne Goodchild from UW and discussed small-scale farming and potential actions that anyone can do to help shape the world.
We certainly struggled in the beginning when we were selecting the outline, but after we found our grounding, everything sailed smoothly. The biggest takeaway from this project was that not everything falls into place like you assume it would. The real world is an intimidating place and our ideas weren’t necessarily feasible for a class project.
Relating it to the topic of food accessibility, it’s crucial that we remind ourselves of where our food is coming from. There’s an abundance of “food” production in the United States, yet only on a massive scale; reducing the nutritional value and the authenticity.
Systems theory benefited our group by allowing us to connect our local action to the global scale. Completing a project on this scale may not necessarily feel influential, but systems theory proves it otherwise. The series of collective help and projects ultimately piece together to impact the world.