Matthewcrowley’s Weblog

Today was an amazing day.  I worked hard with my colleague breaking ground on a community garden.  It was quite the undertaking for two people.  It took nearly all day, we put nearly eight hours into tilling the ground.  But, something interesting happened.  As we were working the ground, turning grass into plant able soil, raking gravel from what was once a parking area, removing debris from the remnants of demolished houses, and picked out sticks and roots from old trees, the neighbors started taking notice.  Now ideally we would have had a meeting and invited the neighbors to participate, however, with the timing of planting season and acquiring use of the land, we had to get it done now. 

As the day went by, we had many conversations with the various neighbors.  Nobody said stop what you are doing, many showed appreciation, and one even donated tomato plants.  I casually asked  those I talked to if they would  be interested in helping.  I talked to a neighbor that is a part of the neighborhood watch and told her of a neighborhood watch group’s neighborhood garden I had visited in Highland Park (Detroit) Michigan. 

Planting the seeds in one’s mind about the potential that their neighborhood holds when it comes to bringing the community together through agriculture, has been such an exciting thing for me, I definitely have a revitalized interest in what my city has to offer me as a citizen.  The ability to meet the diverse and interesting people of this community has to be one of the best feelings!  Helping others to eat locally grown food and improve the nutrition of those around me is also a huge inspiration.

  I recently came across a statistic that suggests that over 80% of our food comes from over 1500 miles away.  The words used to describe the distance food has to travel from farm to your dinner plate is called food miles.  It doesn’t take much to figure out that with the price of fuel these days going up that so is the cost of food miles.  Not to leave out that for food to travel this far it has to be picked before it is ripe so that it will not spoil in transit.

In response to “The World Food Crisis” written by John Nichols in The Nation, I must say how appalling all of this is.  The idea of how far America has bent to the corporate interests. Where greed is the norm vs. humanity, what happened to the ideas that this country was founded on?

The idea that a global food system is designed not to benefit humans who are hunger but rather corporations who hunger for greater profits.  This concept is so sad.  Being from a hard-working family who maintain a small business, that is now over forty years old, I understand the idea that you need a profit and that perpetual existence of the company is desired.  When does a company give in to its profits as its primary purpose of existence?  Why isn’t there a level of concern for fellow man as part of the system?  I really don’t have the answers to these questions.  Though I believe that this article gives us some solutions to these problems of corporate greed, going local with our consumption, especially food is a start. 

            Pushing the government to move legislation that is currently held up, “Representative Jim McGovern urges, that an overdue farm bill expands programs for getting fresh food from local farms to local consumers.”   This is a most when it comes to alleviating the pain and suffering of many Americans and the countries that have been affected by the globalization of food. 

            It looks like our great state of Ohio, has some representatives pushing these local food agendas as well.  Ohio representative Marcy Kaptur and Senator Sherod Brown are both pushing for agricultural practices that makes sense locally and benefit the average farmer and consumer rather than just the major “US-Based agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, Monsanto and ADM.”

“The Idea of a Local Economy,” by Wendell Berry informs us of many of the problems that have risen throughout society leading us to the “environmental crisis,” and how we will not come to a solution until “we raise public awareness and concern.”  It feels like the awareness is rising, concern is debatable. 

Berry points out how the average household has given the responsibility to produce virtually everything needed for consumption to the corporations.  It is scary when you think about how in debt we are for our every need to the corporate world. 

Also, this practice of allocating the responsibility of production of that which is to be consumed has resulted in a system of destruction that can not be maintained or sustained.  “We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of “raw materials,” and that we may safely possess those materials merely by taking them. This taking, as our technical means have increased, has involved always less reverence or respect, less gratitude, less local knowledge, and less skill.”  The model of consumption we are using is not sustainable and we are losing the knowledge necessary to work within the limits or capacity of the natural world. 

The think that strikes me the most about Berry’s essay is that you are not truly free unless you have money.  The idea that those who ‘have not’ are essentially powerless when it comes to the ability to influence the system, they are more like the prey of the machine, the corporate giant.  Berry, however, does offer a solution, that makes sense, “and that is to develop and put into practice the idea of a local economy – something that growing numbers of people are now doing. For several good reasons, they are beginning with the idea of a local food economy. People are trying to find ways to shorten the distance between producers and consumers, to make the connections between the two more direct, and to make this local economic activity a benefit to the local community. They are trying to learn to use the consumer economies of local towns and cities to preserve the livelihoods of local farm families and farm communities. They want to use the local economy to give consumers an influence over the kind and quality of their food, and to preserve and enhance the local landscapes. They want to give everybody in the local community a direct, long-term interest in the prosperity, health, and beauty of their homeland. This is the only way presently available to make the total economy less total.”

Wow, here I am blogging.  Who would have thought?  I mean I have joined other social networking sites like MYSPACE and Facebook, but I haven’t really expressed my thoughts through my writing in a blog yet. 

This blog stemed from an assignment from the college writing class I have been taking.  I have been asked ”How might you use your webblog outside the context of English 110?”     Which led me to the question.  What do I want to share with the world?  Well…  Community Gardening is what I am interested in so this is what I intend to inform my readers about. 

I have been actively researching community gardens and the need for the in my area (Mansfield, OH) over the last couple of months.  Myself and my college meet with the administration of the college (OSU-Mans.)  today to pitch the idea of a community garden here on campus.  This presentation went well, seemed well recieved, and like an attainable goal. 

In the community, I have been having a harder time finding an in with the civic programs and community groups.  No community garden programs are going on that I have been able to tap into.  This has been discouraging, but I keep plugging away. 

Another thing that I did is plant a larger garden this year with the intention that I will have too much food, that I will be able to donate to the local food bank.