Assignment
Create a journal post about the food system:
- How do you feel about the food system after learning about how it works?
- Consider the US vs the rest of the world.
- What are some connections that you can draw?
- Is there anything you want to change? If so, What would you innovate upon?
- How do you think any of this connects to you?
Vegetables grown and purchased from Oko Farms, an urban farm in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Including Tulsi and Collard Greens.
🥫 Feelings about the Food System
- I’m struck by how fundamental food and food system is tied to topics like globalization, technology, and the future.
- Before this class I had a personal interest in changing my relationship with food and making more educated choices but tackling the food system as a whole felt overwhelming without a sense of direction for what the biggest challenges are.
🌐 Food in the US vs Globally
- In class I was able to put this view I had from growing up in the US versus globally.
- Before this class my feelings about organic food brought up topics for me like shame, class, wealth, morality, marketing health foods and diets, and access to food and food storage space.
- I feel more informed about decisions now when I buy groceries of organic vs non gmo and how to read ingredients to better understand how my food is grown since starting class. This made me think about how I was making decisions before and primarily it would be around cost, access and convenience.
🍐 Food and Technology Connections
- I left feeling more confident in my thoughts of how the US the government could be doing so much more to help consumers in the food system and how this is handled in other countries with policies that consider public health and restrict what goes into food that is sold.
- This brought up a connection for me about when I worked as a software engineer and the examples of how legal changes for things like web privacy globally can affect change for all users of a platform as technology and services need to be updated.
- This really highlighted for me how much power and money is in the food system when we talked about how products are made with different ingredients and sold in different countries versus changing the product everywhere.
🌽 What would I change
- I also thought about how disconnected and removed I’ve felt from the food system in my life and how invisible it’s felt.
- While I’ve been trying to learn more about where the food I eat comes from and what labor is involved in the process it feels like more technology is hiding that process, particularly thinking about food or groceries delivery.
- I want to explore using technology to make the food system more visible, providing education, access, and prioritizing low cost and sustainable or cyclical solutions.
🧑🏾🌾 What I Want to Do
As I start to think of what to experiment with in the second half of the class related to the food system these are some things I want to try out and see how my feelings about the food system change afterwards.
